Beirut Inspirational Quotes

In a few weeks almost everyone’s gonna forget about the Beirut bombing, like we forgot about the ever-incoming nuke, like we forgot about the President campaigning on student loan forgiveness, like we forgot about the actor who said not enough Jews died in the Holocaust and that he hoped his wife got gang raped, like how each new President makes the other Presidents look kinder and gentler, like we forget about war crimes, like we forget about the secret police, like we forget about the homeless when we can’t see them, like we forget what it’s like to be poor to be hungry the minute we have food we have money, like we forgot about Three Mile Island, like we forgot that fall and spring used to be as long as winter and summer like we forgot we could do something about this, like we forget about anything we don’t turn into a holiday and remember only the signs and symbols of the horror, like we forget each time we remember that it’s not that we forget, it’s that there are just too many tragedies, every week, forever and ever, and to remember them all would kill you. Your heart would break and stop beating and you'd die. So we forget.

Well, didn't you look sharp with your boots when you met me on the path? From two-tone to downtown Beirut but only halfway back Stealing bits of wisdom from the shelf Turned prisons into prisms of the self And what do they know about the springtime or me and you? Born in the midst of the long hot summer we lived through Did they see you run for every rhyme? Did we run for running out of time? When even heroes have to die No one lives forever, love, no one's wise to try We're adding our own wisdom to the shelf Stealing bits of paper, we had help But working away, did we miss the passing of the time? In your own flame you can wither though your passions still outshine Did you read the writing on the wall? Prophesying doom upon us all But even heroes have to die No one lives forever, love, no one's wise to try But hidden in the writing on the wall Many are the beauties of the fall

Beirut and I have a complicated relationship. I love, admire, but also fear the city.

Ambassadors to Lebanon are invariably career State Department employees, this a glaring exception to the custom wherein lead diplomatic posts are reserved as political appointments, presidents finding places for their deep-pocketed campaign donors, close friends, and Ivy League fraternity brothers. France, England, Sweden, and Brazil—these are the verdant gardens, the well-bought consular A-list. An ambassadorship to Lebanon, on the other hand, lies considerably further down the alphabet. With its magnetism for bombings, kidnappings, and religious-inspired mayhem, Beirut postings are invariably filled—on a strictly volunteer basis—by brave and long-tenured employees from Foggy Bottom.

Intimacy without disinterest lapses into commitment to one side or another; disinterest without intimacy lapses into banality and misunderstanding.

Osama bin Laden drew inspiration from Hezbollah’s dual suicide attacks against the multinational forces in Beirut in 1983. Al Qaeda’s first simultaneous suicide attacks on two U.S. embassies in eastern Africa on August 7, 1998, were directly modeled on Hezbollah’s 1983 attacks. Al Qaeda’s coordinated suicide missions expanded the model three years later for four simultaneous airplane hijackings on September 11, 2001. The nineteen Islamic jihadists, who were armed only with box cutters, successfully hijacked four commercial planes to carry out their suicide mission. Their bravado spoke for itself in that they didn’t even bother to have a backup plan.

The Levantine political idea, which grew naturally among the communities of the eastern Mediterranean, was an original way of dealing with diverse tribal, village, and sectarian identities, and it inspired the Beirutis and ultimately the Lebanese to believe that they could build a modern Arab republic, melding together seventeen different Christian, Muslim, and Druse sects.