Naguib Mahfouz Quotes

In the calculus of good deeds you have the most to gain.

Art is a criticism of society and life, and I believe that if life became perfect, art would be meaningless and cease to exist.

There are no heroes in most of my stories. I look at our society with a critical eye and find nothing extraordinary in the people I see.

The real malady is fear of life, not of death

Today's interpretations of religion are often backward and contradict the needs of civilization.

Excessive concern with religion seems to me a last resort for people who have been exhausted by life.

Visit me once each year, for it's wrong to abandon people forever.

The calendar has a magic that makes us imagine a memory can be resurrected and revived, but nothing returns.

The heart is a place of secrets.

You know what I'm afraid of? That God is sick of us.

Nothing records the effects of a sad life so graphically as the human body.

We wont develop until we accept that reading is a vital necessity.

Only the poor are handicapped by honor.

Madness is the acme of intelligence.

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

It's a most distressing affliction to have a sentimental heart and a skeptical mind.

You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.

Fear does not prevent death. It prevents life.

Home is not where you were born; home is where all your attempts to escape cease.

A priest's life is spent between question and answer-- or between a question and the attempt to answer it. The question is the summary of the spiritual life.

paraphrasing.."Science is the language of the intellect of society. Art is language of the entire human personality.

I started writing while I was a little boy. Maybe it's because I was reading a lot of books I admired, and thought that I would like to write something like that someday. Also, my love for good writing pushed me.

"Death by love is fairer by far than death by illness", said Amenhotep III.

An allegory is not meant to be taken literally. There is a great lack of comprehension on the part of some readers.

I believe society has a right to defend itself, just as the individual has the right to attack that with which he disagrees.

According to Islamic principles, when a man is accused of heresy, he is given the choice between repentance and punishment.

If the urge to write should ever leave me, I want that day to be my last.

I was afraid of marriage. I had the impression married life would take up all my time. I saw myself drowning in visits and parties. No freedom.

God did not intend religion to be an exercise club.

Events at home, at work, in the street - these are the bases for a story.

If we reject science, we reject the common man.

The Koran and the laws of all civilized nations legislate against the vilification of religions.

If you want to move people, you look for a point of sensitivity, and in Egypt nothing moves people as much as religion.

At my age it is unseemly to be pessimistic.

The writer interweaves a story with his own doubts, questions, and values. That is art.