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Quotes by Turkish Authors
"Where are you? In the past or in the future? It doesn't matter because if you are not in today you are in the wrong place!"
"Just because you believe in something, you cannot expect others to respect for your belief! They may even make fun of it! All you have to do is to be peaceful at any time, with everyone! Something holy for you may be just a rubbish for others! All you have to do is to be peaceful at any time, with everyone!"
"Unless you accept anyone to be your boss, no man can be your boss!"
"Start your journey where the road ends! Glory lies beyond the ends!"
"Concentrate on the road ahead, not on the road behind!"
"There is no mountain on earth which is greater than the mountain of human madness!"
"No moment is more valuable than this moment because no moment is alive outside this moment any moment other than this moment is either dead or hasn't born yet!"
"The waiting was torture, the worst Ka had ever known. It was this pain, this deadly wait, he now remembered, that had made him afraid to fall in love."
"It's not enough to be oppressed, you must also be in the right. Most oppressed people are in the wrong to an almost ridiculous degree. What shall I believe in?"
"Time had not faded my memories (as I had prayed to God it might), nor had it healed my wounds as it is said always to do. I began each day with the hope that the next day would be better, my recollections a little less pointed, but I would awake to the same pain, as if a black lamp were burning eternally inside me, radiating darkness."
"When a good poet is confronted with difficult facts that he knows to be true but also are inimical to poetry, he has no choice but to flee to the margins; it wasthis very retreat that allowed him to hear the hidden music that is the source of all art."
"After all, isn't the purpose of the novel, or of a museum, for that matter, to relate our memories with such sincerity as to transform individual happiness into a happiness all can share?"
"Superficial cannot discover the deep, because both live in different levels and likewise the deep cannot meet the deepest! Change your level to reach at different levels!"
"I asked him about his enemies. He began to count them. The list went on and on...." - Conversations with Yahya Kemal."
"Art is our endless desire to turn the mortal things into the immortal things!"
"If you want to help a hungry poor man sleeping on the bench, don't ever wake him up; put the food on the bench, put some money and leave the place without looking at your back!"
"Every irrational and unscientific belief will ruin your life! Your own wrong belief will be your own tragic punishment!"
"If you cannot solve your problem, change your position and look at your problem from a different angle with a different mind! Every problem has a hole where you can enter inside and destroy it!"
"I realized that the longing for art, like the longing for love, is a malady that blinds us, and makes us forget the things we already know, obscuring reality."
"I don't want to be a tree, I want to be its meaning."
"In Europe the rich are refined enough to act as if they're not wealthy. That is how civilized people behave. If you ask me, being cultured and civilized is not about everyone being free and equal; it's about everyone being refined enough to act as if they were. Then no one has to feel guilty."
"Man is hypocrite! He says that he loves flowers but he kills them for his own simple interests and for his own joy! Man is hypocrite!"
"Look at yourself from the space! You are very little, you are so tiny! But there is something big in you: Your great ideas! Even from the space they look big because they have the power to change the universe, to change the space!"
"If we had known everything in this universe, we would have had to find another universe to feed our curiosity, because what keeps alive man is the curiosity!"
"Do you want a good advice on your path? Here it is: Don't be sure of your path! Don't ever be sure of it! Do you want more advice? Here it is: Doubt your path! And examine the other paths, know the other paths!"
"If an earth with no other creatures but only humans would be possible, it would be unbearably boring!"
"Your best walk is the one you walk with your own style! Imitating others means wiping out ourselves!"
"A man could be at the coffee-house every evening laughing and playing cards with his friends, he could have so much fun with his classmates that there is never a moment they arent t exploding into laughter, he could spend every hour of the day chatting with his intimates, but if that man has been abandoned by God, he d still be the loneliest man on earth."
"Those that cannot produce ideas often speak with the old proverbs!"
"You like the wind? There is no wind? Start running! Create your own wind!"
"The sound we hear when it snows is the soft song of the white beauty!"
"The tram can run over you only if you are on the tram way! The darkness can run over you only if you are on the ignorance way!"
"It is very possible that the majority of a nation can choose darkness! Such fool nations learn the beauty of light through the unbearable and inconceivable pains!"
"The beauty of shadow comes from the beauty of light!"
"If people notice you only when you do something very strange, then you are very lucky! You can enjoy your life without being noticed as long as you don't do anything very strange!"
"Tell me then, does love make one a fool or do only fools fall in love?"
"What is awakening? Awakening is the cessation of self-deception! Religion is self-deception; fate is self-deception; the idea that there is no death but only continuation is a self-deception! Real awakening is to acquire a scientific mind, it is to meet face to face with the bare realities, and it is to leave the spiritual fallacies and fantasies! And this is real awakening!"
"I saw myself in the mirror, and from my expression I had a shocking intimation of the rift between my body and my soul. Whereas my face was drained by defeat and shock, inside my head was another universe: I now understood as an elemental fact of life that while I was here, inside my body was a soul, a meaning, that all things were made of desire, touch, and love, that what I was suffering was composed of the same elements."
"If you are a giant mountain, you cannot escape from being famous; all that you can do is to pray for the fog to cover you up!"
"Sometimes I sensed that the books I read in rapid succession had set up some sort of murmur among themselves, transforming my head into an orchestra pit where different musical instruments sounded out, and I would realize that I could endure this life because of these musicales going on in my head."
"Moments fly and if you don't fly with the moments, you remain on the ground apart from the moments while the moments are flying!"
"There are many peaceful ways to get rid of a fascist government and economic war against such a government is the best way amongst all these ways! And what is the economic war? It is to stop feeding the economy that feeds the fascist government, it is to take out your own individual brick from the wall of pro-government economy. Halt the food of the devil! Don't forget that it is you who is feeding the hyena that bites you!"
"If lots of men around you are growing a beard just because of political or ideological reasons, you refuse this, and if you have a beard, shave it off! Leave your herd to find yourself! Find your own style, not the style your ideology or your party is dictating on you! Remember, you build a sound character mostly through refusing, through saying no, through staying different!"
"Sometimes principles must be quitted without blinking en eye to discover the new paths!"
"When a beautiful reality looks unreal, you will realize that the beauty of reality is superior to any dream whatsoever!"
"If you want to look after your shadow, you just have to look after yourself, that will do!"
"Roald Amundsen says that 'Adventure is just bad planning.' In that case, friends, let us make more bad planning!"
"If you know the right path, never keep it to only yourself! If you know the wrong path, never keep it to only yourself!"
"To achieve a great success, you must first have yourself behind yourself as your greatest supporter!"
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