Quotes by Naguib Mahfouz

“Happy is he who can give himself up.”

“an Arabian narrative art that applies to all mankind.”

I want a world where men live free from fear and coercion.

Oh...why has time changed us?

Beauty itself is a painful convulsion in the heart, an abundance of vitality in the soul, and a mad chase undertaken by the spirit until it encounters the heavens.

I found myself in a sea in which the waves of joy and sorrow were clashing against each other.

Fear does not prevent death. It prevents life.

At times people who are extremely sad become lighthearted for the most trivial reasons, merely to obtain the relief furnished by the exactly opposite condition.

Dont go back over the past. Let it depart, never to return.

Why don’t we keep track of the happy moments, so that afterward we will believe them? Is he the same man Was he really sincere?

I want a world where hearts are not deceived and do not deceive others.

No blasphemy harms Islam and Muslims so much as the call for murdering a writer

An anxious heart is like a string thats out of tune.

It is an indication of truths jealousy that it has not made for anyone a path to it, and that it has not deprived anyone of the hope of attaining it, and it has left people running in the deserts of perplexity and drowning in the seas of doubt; and he who thinks he has attained it, it dissociates itself from, and he who thinks he has dissociated himself from it has lost his way.

There is no alternative to action, and that requires faith. The issue is how we are to mold for ourselves a belief system that is worthy of life.

Writing is for men who can think and feel, not mindless sensation seekers out of nightclubs and bars. But these are bad times. We are condemned to work with upstarts, clowns who no doubt got their training in a circus and then turned to journalism as the appropriate place to display their tricks.

I was a government employee in the morning and a writer in the evening.

God did not intend religion to be an exercise club.

I love Sufism as I love beautiful poetry, but it is not the answer. Sufism is like a mirage in the desert. It says to you, come and sit, relax and enjoy yourself for a while.

I defend both the freedom of expression and societys right to counter it. I must pay the price for differing. It is the natural way of things.