Salih Quotes & Sayings

Love is like a sun wherever you be, its ray will reach you — Kamaran Ihsan Salih

You are entitled to wonder and to doubt - you're free. — Tayeb Salih

Life consists on lightness and darkness, when you reached to lightness, prepare your tools for darkness — Kamaran Ihsan Salih

Season of Migration to the North, by Tayeb Salih, is an eloquent and restrained portrait of one man's exile. It is a rare narrative in that it charts a life divided between England and Sudan. Without a doubt it is one of the finest Arabic novels of the 20th century, and Denys Johnson-Davies' translationdoes the original justice. — Hisham Matar

Be who your are, do not be what people want you to be — Kamaran Ihsan Salih

Do not pay attention to what they say, pay attention to what they do — Kamaran Ihsan Salih

Cry is a sound in woman's ear; it is a volcano in man's heart. — Kamaran Ihsan Salih

Do not put everybody's foot into your old shoe; it might not be suitable for everyone. — Kamaran Ihsan Salih

The most dangerous enemy is that enemy when your ally becomes enemy — Kamaran Ihsan Salih

Today you laugh at me, tomorrow you will cry for yourself — Kamaran Ihsan Salih

Silence is from inner fullness — Kamaran Ihsan Salih

We teach people in order to open up their minds and release their captive powers. But we cannot predict the result. Freedom - we free their minds from superstition. We give the people the keys of the future to act therein as they wish. — Tayeb Salih

I heard Mansour say to Richard, 'You transmitted to us the disease of your capitalist economy. What did you give us except for a handful of capitalist companies that drew off our blood - and still do?' Richard said to him, 'All this shows that you cannot manage to live without us. You used to complain about colonialism and when we left you created the legend of neo-colonialism. It seems that our presence, in an open or undercover form, is as indispensable to you as air and water.'

They were not angry: they said such things to each other as they laughed, a stone's throw from the Equator, with a bottomless historical chasm separating the two of them. — Tayeb Salih

Everyone starts at the beginning of the road, and the world is in an endless state of childhood. — Tayeb Salih

It is not important if you lose the game, but it is important, when you lose your trust by other people — Kamaran Ihsan Salih

Study to learn, do not study to pass". — Kamaran Ihsan Salih

The precious gems are hidden, it is not easy to find them. — Kamaran Ihsan Salih

Going to upward is hard, facing downward is harder, that's why you have to be well prepared. — Kamaran Ihsan Salih

Wad Rayyes, you're a man who talks. rubbish. Your whole brain's in the head of your penis and the head of your penis is as small as your brain. — Tayeb Salih

Proudness is from ignorance, humbleness is from wisdom — Kamaran Ihsan Salih

Marriage is not consist upon happiness, it consists upon accountability, before considering the happiness, think about the accountability — Kamaran Ihsan Salih

Everyone who is educated today wants to sit at a comfortable desk under a fan and live in an air-conditioned house surrounded by a garden, coming and going in an American car as wide as the street. If we do not tear out this disease by the roots we shall have with us a bourgeoisie that is in no way connected with the reality of our life ... — Tayeb Salih

I entered the water as naked as when my mother bore me. When I first touched the cold water I felt a shudder go through me, then the shudder was transformed into a sensation of wakefulness. — Tayeb Salih

And when the sea swallowed up the shore and the waves heaved under the ship and the blue horizon encircled us, I immediately felt an overwhelming intimacy with the sea. I knew this green, infinite giant, as though it were roving back and forth within my ribs. The whole of the journey I savored that feeling of being nowhere, alone, before and behind me either eternity or nothingness. — Tayeb Salih

The day here is a something without value, a mere torment suffered by living creatures as they await the night. Night is deliverance. — Tayeb Salih

When the cat gets hungry, it starts to steal. — Kamaran Ihsan Salih

You don't want it, but the destiny oblige it — Kamaran Ihsan Salih

I am no Othello, Othello was a lie. — Tayeb Salih

I left him and took myself off, having become certain about a fact which was later on to cost me much peace of mind: that in one form or another I was in love with Hosna Bint Mahmoud, the widow of Mustafa Sa'eed, and that I - like him and Wad Rayyes and millions of others - was not immune from the germ of contagion that oozes from the body of the universe. — Tayeb Salih

I have redefined the so-called East-West relationship as essentially one of conflict, while it had previously been treated in romantic terms. — Tayeb Salih

Sooner or later they will leave our country, just as many people throughout history left many countries. The railways, ships, hospitals, factories and schools will be ours and we'll speak their language without either a sense of guilt or a sense of gratitude. Once again we shall be as we were - ordinary people - and if we are lies we shall be lies of our own making. — Tayeb Salih

The important thing is that I returned with a great yearning for my people in that small village at the bend of the Nile. For seven years I had longed for them, had dreamed of them, and it was an extraordinary moment when I at last found myself standing amongst them. They rejoiced at having me back and made a great fuss, and it was not long before I felt as though a piece of ice were melting inside of me, as though I were some frozen substance on which the sun had shone - that life warmth of the tribe which I had lost for a time in a land 'whose fishes die of the cold'. — Tayeb Salih

By the standards of the European industrial world we are poor peasants, but when I embrace my grandfather I experience a sense of richness as though I am a note in the heartbeats of the very universe. — Tayeb Salih

Shadow of Your Spirit

At night I see the shadow of your spirit
Mixing with my blood and soul
During the day I see your photos
They tell me come to me
Come to my world and romance
Even I don't know by myself
How I fell into your love
I cannot remove it from my heart
Your love stabled my soul — Kamaran Ihsan Salih

I want to take my rightful share of life by force, I want to give lavishly, I want love to flow from my heart, to ripen and bear fruit. There are many horizons that must be visited, fruit that must be plucked, books read, and white pages in the scrolls of life to be inscribed with vivid sentences in a bold hand. — Tayeb Salih

There is no room for me here. Why don't I pack up and go? Nothing astonishes these people. They take everything in their stride. They neither rejoice at a birth nor are saddened at a death. When they laugh they say "I ask forgiveness of God" and when they weep they say "I ask forgiveness of God". Just that. And I, what have I learnt? — Tayeb Salih

Do not afraid of your previous mistakes, try to fix them. — Kamaran Ihsan Salih

Do a bit research before you plan. — Kamaran Ihsan Salih

The blood of the setting sun suddenly spilled out on the western horizon like that of millions of people who have died in some violent war that has broken out between Earth and Heaven. Suddenly the war ended in defeat and all-embracing darkness descended and pervaded all four corners of the globe, wiping out the sadness and shyness that was in her eyes. — Tayeb Salih

Exercise 1: Guarding the Prayer
Once we are performing the five obligatory prayers with regularity, then it is certainly worth our efforts to begin increasing extra prayers- especially the late-night prayers (tahajjud). Late-night prayer is one of the defining qualities of a salih (righteous) person, also called a wali (friend of Allah). Regarding late-night prayers, Fudayl b. 'Iyyad said that if a man was unable to do them, it was due to his wrong actions during the day. May Allah make us befitting to stand before Him, here and in the hereafter.
Agenda to Change our Condition, Hamza Yusuf & Zaid Shakir, S. 46 — Hamza Yusuf