Quote

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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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
Play
Desert
Donkey
Golf
Ford
Praying
Sage
Poet
Jersey
Fool
Post
Bathes
Whether
Posts
Ganges
President
Republic
Rides
War
Plays
Prays

More quotes by Ameen Rihani

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The heart yields spontaneity the mind bends to understanding.
Ameen Rihani
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I am for reformation by emigration. The emigration of the mind before the revolution of the state. The soul and mind must be free before one has a right to be a member of a free government.
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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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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We have to dissolve all the denominations in order to form from them the greater denomination of the homeland.
Ameen Rihani
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Self-reliance leads to intellectual independence. Each man must think for himself, must train the mind to think, must habituate the soul to observe and analyze.
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
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My American walking shoes are new, and my Oriental eyes are old.
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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True knowledge is power but in order to feel at home with it, we must be constitutionally qualified. And if we are not, it is likely to give the soul such a twist as to deform it forever.
Ameen Rihani
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You teacher, teach your pupils freedom in thought and deed, honesty in thought and deed, and tolerance in thought and deed.
Ameen Rihani
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The will is the spirit of perseverance, and perseverance holds clear success.
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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I deposit in many banks including the bank of wisdom. The more I draw on my accounts, no matter how big the sum, the bigger my balance becomes
Ameen Rihani
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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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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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I want to accept all the difficulties that face me in life with perseverance and patience.
Ameen Rihani
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At this moment, my soul is in Lebanon, my heart in Paris, and my body in New York.
Ameen Rihani
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Foreign culture is as necessary to the spirit of a nation as is foreign commerce to its industries.
Ameen Rihani
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We can not understand each other, if our sympathies are always safely tucked away we can not understand each other, if our approaches are always academic or conventional we can not understand each other, if we crawl back into our shells every time we see a worm across our path.
Ameen Rihani