Beirut Love Quotes

Beirut is the Elizabeth Taylor of cities: insane, beautiful, falling apart, aging, and forever drama laden.She'll also marry any infatuated suitor who promises to make her life more comfortable, no matter how inappropriate he is.

Men grant and withdraw their love according to their whims, but fear is a hand that rests on their shoulders in a way they can never shake.

Nothing is very constant in Beirut. Certainly not dreams. But despair isn’t constant either. Beirut is a city to be loved and hated a thousand times a day. Every day. It is exhausting, but it is also beautiful.

Day after day, the globalization of terrorism becomes more evident. This is the one of the biggest challenges we are facing. We must stand with the innocent people around the world who are suffering or have lost their loved ones as a result of terrorism.

That's when it hit me; my sunglasses were buried in the grave where my Talal lay. Yes, my sunglasses were buried with him. But oh, how I wish my eyes had gone with him instead.

I don't think I ever fully understood before now the old saying that goes: "A mother's heart loves her young one until he grows; her ill one until he heals; and her traveler until he returns." I have experienced all kinds of waiting; I've waited for my young to grow and the sick to heal, but I am still waiting on my little traveler and I do not know how long it will be until I see him again.

We worship fire because it is the closest sensation to what a man feels when love exists. Fire is a passage and a dance, but its destruction brings renewal.

In my dreams, I entered a world where success was based on ethics and proper dealings, not bribes and scams. My vision of sucess including marrying Sophia, having joyful children, unassuming friends, and warmhearted neighbors. I aspired for an environment where I would be valued for my good character, not the strength of my aggression. I wanted to leave West Beirut, the four square miles of a lesser world.

I opted not to go to Beirut. I refused to admit it, but Damascus was the last place I wanted to go. It was as though as long as I didn't go back, I could pretend that you would be there waiting for me, having a coffee on my auntie's patio and bouncing her baby on your knee. Going back to Damascus meant facing your absence, dispelling the illusion. Facing myself in the mirror is like that. If I never cut my hair if I don't acknowledge that I've never allowed anyone to really know me, I can pretend that a perfect road awaits me. I can pretend their some medicine that will magically allow me to see myself. But going down that road might mean discovering that there is no magic strong enough to bring me into harmony. Breaking the illusion means acknowledging the parts of myself that will never be visible.

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.

Cuando nos enfrentamos a una crisis, a menudo perdemos todo aquello de nosotros mismos que hemos pasado toda la vida construyendo.

I don’t hate the English. I have nothing against the colonial bastards. It’s a lovely weakened country with a big useless history.

both women writers and questions of gender and sex have been central to the development of Arab intellectual and political life beyond the confines of well-known debates about the status and rights of women. Specifically, it shows how a broad faith in middle-class women’s power as childrearers enabled Islamists, liberals, and feminists alike to contend with three questions that defined intellectual life: how to imagine futures after imperial rule, how to balance the promises of democratic politics with the interests of reformist elites, and how to stabilize existing social hierarchies under the shifting conditions of colonial capitalism. In other words, the story of tarbiya lays out some of the central contradictions of democracy and capitalism as they were encountered in Cairo and Beirut. On another level, the book attempts to think with the concept of tarbiya to analyze the broader questions of social and political reproduction that challenged Arab intellectuals and many others at the turn of the twentieth century, and that continue to challenge us today.13 It shows how writers, both men and women, turned to childrearing to understand

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

An American Special Forces guy greets me at the airport. If you liked Beirut, he says, you’re gonna love Mogadishu. I only half understand the reference and the implication. There’s so much fighting in the city today, he says, that we have to shuttle incoming UN staff from the airport to the office compound via Black Hawk helicopter. Jump on, son, welcome to Somalia.

Her voice was impatient with rage. ‘They say the only deterrent to terror is to kill terrorists. It’s the same argument that dictators have made to murder opponents throughout history. Say it whatever way you want – whether it comes from the mouth of a dictator or as an excuse to repress people of different political views – it’s the same old serpent.’ Halima swept her hand across the evening. ‘All this violence. The idea that killing people solves problems. War is all they know, and they are good at it, so they kill people thinking that war will bring peace. It never brings peace. There is only a pause in the war.’ She was quiet for a moment, struggling with her indignation. ‘They are not a kind people. Some are kind, some are wise, but not the politicians. The opposite of kindness is not cruelty. It is indifference. All this’ – she looked across the bombed city – ‘is indifference. Our suffering isn’t about who we are. It is about who they are. Airplanes and tanks give them the power to be indifferent.’ She sipped her drink, and her voice lowered and softened. ‘Israel’s prime ministers – Sharon, Olmert, Netanyahu – believe they can solve these problems with toughness, but things have changed. The Islamic faith has spread. For better or worse.’ Her hand went to her heart. When she spoke again, her soprano voice was strident. ‘How will they frighten jihadists who love martyrdom?’ She shook her head. ‘God forbid.’ ‘You’re wrong,’ Analise said. ‘Not all Israelis are that way.’ ‘Je le croirai, guard je le verrai.’ She paused. ‘Let them show it.’ She waved dismissively. ‘Beirut survived the Romans, the Ottomans, the French. The land and the people endure. That land has defeated stronger enemies than Israel. Israel is an idea. Ideas come and go. Land endures.’ She lowered her head and looked out at the darkened city. Her words came in quiet lament. ‘The scourge of this land is the curse of revenge.

We Beirutis have complicated feelings toward our city. We love Beirut when we are away and we hate it when we are here. We are happy only when we are leaving or returning.

In times of conflict and strife, the Lebanese unite. I read somewhere once that in the darkest of times comes the brightest of lights. The light of the Beirutis is blinding.

A faint smile touched his lips. “How militant you’re being. What if I don’t choose to stay? Will I be chained to your wrist like a diplomat’s briefcase?” “If necessary.” She blinked back tears of anger and exhaustion. “I’ll do anything I can to keep you here. It’s stupid of you to even think of leaving me when you love me. And you do love me. Why don’t you admit it?” “I love you,” he said obediently. “You’re so damned frightened that I’m going to be hurt—” She stopped and tried to steady her voice. “Well, if you don’t stay with me, I’ll get Penny and Mac to give me the most dangerous assignments they can dredge up. Beirut, investigative reporting, drug running.” The smile disappeared from Jordan’s face. “The hell you will.

Death makes one forgive and love again. We humans only value our losses and regrets.

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

Between this earthy love and unearthly circumstances, I fell in love with you.

I was a boy who once fell in love. After I lost the love of my life I metamorphosed drastically.

In the darkest times of my life, you were the Shams who appeared from afar to guide me.

Your absence taught me the moral of cherishing happiness whenever it existed.

I knew the day our eyes met that our love was unique, and if it ended no other feeling could replace it .

Why don't you use your power over me? "Because love means renouncing strength.

My home was not the place I was born in, it was the two arms I there myself into and the eyes I starred at.

And I was reminded of something I learned from another mentor, my first boss after I graduated, Massimo Vignelli, who once described the difference between complication and complexity. A love affair that's complex is wonderful, he said, but a love affair thats complicated is a disaster.