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An object is great in proportion to its power of resistance to time and the elements. That is why we think the pyramids are great. But see, the desert is greater than the pyramids, and the sea is greater than the desert, and the heavens are greater than the sea.

Ameen Rihani

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Ameen Rihani
Age: 63 †
Born: 1876
Born: November 24
Died: 1940
Died: September 13
Essayist
Historian
Novelist
Poet
Politician
Writer
Ottoman Levant
Amīn Fāris Anṭūn ar-Rīḥānī
Ameen Fares Rihani
Amin Rihani
Heaven
Proportion
Power
Desert
Great
Resistance
Time
Object
Think
Sea
Thinking
Elements
Objects
Pyramids
Greater
Heavens

More quotes by Ameen Rihani

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I state the threefold purpose of my travels in Arabia: to see the country, to write about it and to be of some service to its people and their cause - that is what brought me from beyond the seas, from America.
Ameen Rihani
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Yes, I am calling for an intellectual revolution that sweeps away the corruption, absurdity and error, which prevail in morals, customs, traditions, and doctrines.
Ameen Rihani
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Our Phoenician ancestors never left anything they undertook unfinished. Consider what they accomplished in their days, and the degree of culture they attained.
Ameen Rihani
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Mutual tolerance is the stepping stone to mutual respect. A hospitable mind is the key to a neighboring or an alien spirit, looked by dogma and guarded by tradition.
Ameen Rihani
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Truth breeds power, and truth never perishes.
Ameen Rihani
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I am the East. I have philosophies, I have religions, who would exchange them for airplanes?
Ameen Rihani
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I want to accept all the difficulties that face me in life with perseverance and patience.
Ameen Rihani
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Virtue, once bragged about, once you pride yourself upon it, ceases to be such.
Ameen Rihani
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True up-bringing is restricted to two types of welfare the welfare of the body and that of the mind.
Ameen Rihani
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A poet is a poet, whether he rides in a Ford or on a donkey a sage is a sage, whether he plays golf in New Jersey or bathes in the Ganges, or prays in the desert and a fool is a fool, whether he be a maharaja or a president of a post-war republic.
Ameen Rihani
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Ignorance and fear are twins whose mother is slavery and whose father is oppression, and the mentality of the whole family is that of slaves.
Ameen Rihani
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We can not understand each other, if every time we venture out we stick the feather of cocksureness in our caps. No, we can never wholly understand each other, and rise to the level of mutual esteem at least, if we do not invest in that fellow feeling that triumphs over class and creed and race and color.
Ameen Rihani
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The duties I ask of myself are obligatory for absolutely every individual, everywhere. Moreover, just as I recognize these rights and duties of others, I would like the others to recognize them form me as well.
Ameen Rihani
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... However, there is another method, other than revolution, which is that of natural evolution, or rather the intellectual method with all its modes of education and up-bringing.
Ameen Rihani
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The West for me means ambition, the East contentment. My heart is ever in one, my soul in the other.
Ameen Rihani
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In the Lakes of Light, Love and Will, I would baptize all mankind.
Ameen Rihani
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I proceeded in my national mission, seeking to pave the way for an understanding between His Majesty and the other ruling princes of Arabia.
Ameen Rihani
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We must strive to form a comprehensive sublime nationalism whose first principal is national geographic unity and must strengthen this unity with deeds not with words.
Ameen Rihani
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Genius everywhere is one. In the Orient and in the Occident the deep thinkers are kin, the poets are cousins, the pioneers of the spirit are the messengers of peace and good will to the world. Their works are the open highways between nations, and they themselves are the ever living guardians and guides.
Ameen Rihani
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In the desert you become a discoverer. You discover your soul, which had been submerged in vain pursuits, which had been lost in the coils and toils of modern life. You discover your kinship with nature and man, which is evoked by the naturalness and the gentle humanity of the natives of the desert, and you will also discover God.
Ameen Rihani