Personal dignity is to be measured with the yardstick of one's conscience, not with that of other people's judgement.

Your identity is like your shadow: not always visible and yet always present.

Unlike money, hope is all: for the rich as well as for the poor.

Do not confuse fantasy with imagination; the former consumes itself in daydreaming, the latter stimulates creativity in the arts and in the sciences.

When you would suffocate or ignore dissent, remember how many times you dissented.

A secret remains a secret until you make someone promise never to reveal it.

Sometimes true tolerance requires an extraordinary strength, which we are often too weak to exercise.

If you are living in the past or in the future, you will never find a meaning in the present.

It is certainly a good thing always to forgive with generosity, but it is no doubt just never to forget the wrongs received: they belong to the route that leads to inner maturity.

Secret thoughts are only half free: they fly undisturbed in the skies of the inner freedom, but they can never leave them.

Inner freedom demands the rejection of any imposition that injures our dignity.

Lovers tend to be philosophical, achievers are practical.

Off so stupid mothers... so stupid plans... what are you planning..., for god sake???

Everyone lives the way she knows best. What I mean by 'their happiness' is living a life untouched as much as possible by the knowledge that we are really, all of us, alone. That's not a bad thing.

When you stop comparing what is right here and now with what you wish were, you can begin to enjoy what is.

I'm active on Twitter, and I love my iPad and my Kindle.

The final test of a painting, theirs, mine, any other, is: do the painter's emotions come across?

If Allah created you for this world, He would have created you without death.

There is absolutely no common sense, it is common non-sense.

One of the great things going on right now is social media and you get a real sense, immediately, about what people are feeling and thinking.

The tomb is not a blind alley: it is a thoroughfare. It closes on the twilight. It opens on the dawn.