Expressions About Exile
- Wealth in exile is a home, while poverty in one’s homeland feels like exile.
- Exile does not allow you to truly know anyone.
- In exile, you cannot claim ownership of anything; all you possess is your dream.
- Exile knows everyone.
- Ignorance is a form of exile in one’s homeland, while knowledge is a homeland within exile.
- The strangest of strangers is the one whose exile emanates from within.
- Living in exile feels akin to struggling to breathe.
- After a long absence in exile, a person may no longer have a true homeland.
- I fear the exile in death more than the one I face in this world.
- Exile may offer many things, including many squirrels, hazelnut trees, and wide streets, yet what truly lacks is support and companionship.
- Perhaps exile grants you much when you are an individual, but takes away more when you are part of a community.
- I live within everyone, and everyone becomes an exile.
- The beauty of exile lies in transforming strangers into friends and friends into brothers.
- Exile gnaws at you, and when you become unfit for anything, it casts you back to your homeland.
- Exile seems permissible in its realm, while exile in one’s homeland is lethal.
- The most profound processes of self-reconstruction occur in the quietest moments of solitude and exile.
- How harsh is exile for one who lacks the memory of a jasmine flower?
- Exile cannot extinguish a wound.
- Exile is largely a half-truth; it is similar to everything.
- One contracts exile much like one suffers from asthma, with no cure for either; poets endure an even worse fate because poetry, in essence, is a form of exile.
- The most intense form of exile is what you feel in your homeland.
- I cannot tolerate this open window to exile; it feels like a wall, through which I see nothing.
Famous Quotes About Exile
- I know that the boats in the harbor complain of boredom, but the sailing vessels lament exile and bear witness that the season of return to the homeland has come.
- Happiness confuses me; it alone frightens me because I am not accustomed to it; I am a woman familiar with exile.
- Exile is losing the voice of someone you love.
- No one enjoys love like I do, for no one knows the meaning of suffering like I do. I have passed through the city of madness, resided in the city of exile, and have been possessed by the city of terror for a time, yet I managed to leave it all once again for the city of ordinary life.
- The time has ended where our families feared for us in exile; now, we fear for them in the homeland.
- You lie, your consciousness lies constantly, as if you were exile, as if you had been a stranger in exile, as if you were familiar with exile, but I am uncertain: it is exile.
- I spread out my exile and wrapped myself in your love, and I found myself in my homeland, discovering with you a bird forgotten by our tribe for ages, called happiness.
- Exile makes our hearts delicate, like ancient fabric that allows water to seep through easily; feelings have no armor in exile, illusions defeat us, melding homelands with the people we meet from our lands; we may find ourselves loving them and confusing that love for our homeland.
- Exile cannot heal a wound.
- Pursue literature, for it is an aid to nobility, an enhancement of intellect, a companion in exile, and an adornment in gatherings.
- I am a sailor, nearly burned by the salt of exile.
- I am not a wing; I am the act of soaring. I am not a stranger; I embody exile. I am not free; I am freedom.
- There are no lands of exile; only travelers are the strangers.
- Exile is another distance from the homeland.
- Exile resembles a fragment; it is like everything.
- In sleep, the feelings of people return from exile to their homeland.
- Do not attempt to carry your tree with you into exile to enjoy its shade, for trees do not migrate.
- Exile is akin to death; one always feels that death happens to others. Since that summer, I have become the stranger I always deemed someone else.
Quotes on Exile and the Separation from a Loved One
- Words of farewell carry with them all the tragedies of humanity on the face of this earth, all their pains, groans, and wounds; it is the hardest thing that can happen to a person.
- When you were by my side, I did not know the meaning of impossibility, but after you left me, I realized that life itself is impossible without you.
- I may seem strong, indifferent, and as tough as a mountain rooted deep within the earth, but inside me is a heart shattered into a thousand pieces from the absence of loved ones.
- After your departure, sadness and pain shared my heart, which once belonged entirely to you.
- My soul went with him the day he left me, and he does not know it.
- I remain silent because my wounds from the separation of loved ones surpass all the tears in the eyes of humanity.
- I cannot see anything with my eyes after your departure; they only look for you.
- After you left, the flowers of my heart withered; they became falling leaves as a passing breeze brushed against them.
- Teach me how to return to life after your farewell; I bid farewell to life when I bid you farewell, and I promised myself never to return until your heart beats within me again.
- Since you left, I have become a prince in the kingdom of sorrow.
A Poem from the Nights of Exile
Farouk Gouida says:
Tonight, I sit, O my heart, behind the doors
I contemplate my face like a stranger
My face changes; I do not know
Do I glimpse my face or is it a deceiving mask?
My heater denies our past
And warmth turns to mirage
The stream of light engages me
Sometimes it escapes my eyes
And then returns to tickle my nerves
While fear becomes torment
I feel the chill of my days
The mirror reflects colors
A color stumbles within the hues
And the night is long with sorrows
It stands yawning in boredom
Spinning and laughing in my face
Laughter echoes between the walls
The stormy silence carries me behind the doors
I see days devoid of meaning
I perceive things… without cause
Fear and confusion plague the streets
How dreadful it is to remain alive…
While the earth is filled with remnants of the dead
The night besieges my days…
And returns to play in the chambers…
For tonight, I remain alone
Wandering in my silence at times
The memories transport me to oblivion
I extract the present in monotony
Recalling the face of the earth… and the color of people
The troubles of solitude… and the jailer
I shall die alone
The oracle of our village said you shall die alone
I might ignite my heater someday
And the flames will rage… and consume me
I might open my window in fear
To let darkness drown me
I might open my door sorrowfully
For a thief to strangle me
Or a guard from our village may enter
Bringing with him sentences and cases
Misinterpreting the judgments
He fires bullets into my chest
Then returns to gather my fragments
And continues to cry at my grave
I made a mistake, by God, in the address
Tonight, I sit, O my heart… and the light is dim
And the curtains of my home are papers torn by the wind
The screen reveals light and shadows, and the face is ugly
Fear binds my eyelids, losing sleep
And the cold shakes my depths like a volcano
I open my window in silence…
My fear sneaks in to close it
And I see apparitions everywhere
I scatter alone in the corners
Tonight wereturned as strangers, and life is winter
For the sun has faded in weariness
And the moon comes without radiance…
I know your eyes, even if we become mere fragments
Whether my days lengthen or shorten, it matters not
I came into this world alone
And I will depart like the strangers
I may misunderstand things
Yet I know your eyes
In sorrow, I will recognize your eyes
In fear, I will know your eyes
In death, I will remember your eyes
Your eyes turn, and I watch them among the shades
I carry your days within me
Amidst ruins… and when fear grips me
I scatter them line by line
Sketching them through time… eras
The wave may rage, casting me onto the oar
Life may turn without light, and the sea may become shell-less
But I carry your eyes…
The oracle of our village said
Sail as you wish with her eyes, fear not death
Your eyes are the talisman of my life
Your fragrance sneaks in through the door
I feel your hands on my chest
I glimpse your eyes on my face
Your breaths embrace mine, and the night is dark
The warmth surrounds my heater, and the reed plays
I quietly shut my window… and return to sleep.