Like the seasons of the year, like history, truth also repeats itself. But we seldom recognize it when great poets or true artists - the prophets and the priests of our day - present it to us in garments spick and span, following the fashion of the age, the slant of its fancy, the turn and temper of its mind.

Ameen Rihani

My first wish is to be simple in my actions, truthful in my speech, honest in my opinions, and natural in my behavior. In other words, I want to be clean in mind, heart, and body.

Ameen Rihani

simple mind heart

To us all, life is a gift, liberty is a right, and the pursuit of happiness is the object supreme. But our conduct in the pursuit differs in accordance with the measure of justice we uphold. A common measure is only possible when we begin to understand and learn to appreciate each other's point of view and point of direction.

Ameen Rihani

pursuit-of-happiness appreciate views

When we go deep enough or high enough, we meet. It is only on the surface that we differ and sometimes clash. True, we do not always find our way to the depth or the height, or we do not take the trouble to do so.

Ameen Rihani

height depth way

Truth breeds power, and truth never perishes.

Ameen Rihani

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

over-you humanity men

Whether you were Moslem, Christian, Druze, or Israeli, remember, God protect thee, that religious fanaticism for political goals or political fanaticism for religious purposes is the worst kind of fanaticism.

Ameen Rihani

goal religious christian

I give priority to up-bringing over education because the ultimate goal of up-bringing is morals, and we have a more urgent need for morals than for knowledge.

Ameen Rihani

priorities goal giving

The heart yields spontaneity; the mind bends to understanding.

Ameen Rihani

yield understanding heart

The religious fanatic drew a small circle and left me, the infidel, outside it. However, I, with the help of love, won over him - I drew a large circle and included him.

Ameen Rihani

circles religious helping

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

individual form rights

The West for me means ambition, the East contentment. My heart is ever in one, my soul in the other.

Ameen Rihani

ambition heart mean

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

self men thinking

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

government soul mind

I am the East. I have philosophies, I have religions, who would exchange them for airplanes?

Ameen Rihani

east airplane philosophy

Breathless and unharmed, we emerge from the mazes of metaphysics and psychology where man and the soul are playing hide-and-seek.

Ameen Rihani

psychology soul men

The footsteps of a pioneer become ultimately the highway of a nation.

Ameen Rihani

highways pioneers nations

Virtue, once bragged about, once you pride yourself upon it, ceases to be such.

Ameen Rihani

cease virtue pride

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

ignorance mother father

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

messengers cousin world

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

color race class