An anxious heart is like a string that's out of tune.

— Naguib Mahfouz

At times people who are extremely sad become lighthearted for the most trivial reasons, merely to obtain the relief furnished by the exactly opposite condition.

— Naguib Mahfouz

Beauty itself is a painful convulsion in the heart, an abundance of vitality in the soul, and a mad chase undertaken by the spirit until it encounters the heavens.

— Naguib Mahfouz

Don't go back over the past. Let it depart, never to return.

— Naguib Mahfouz

Fear does not prevent death. It prevents life.

— Naguib Mahfouz

God did not intend religion to be an exercise club.

— Naguib Mahfouz

I defend both the freedom of expression and society's right to counter it. I must pay the price for differing. It is the natural way of things.

— Naguib Mahfouz

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

— Naguib Mahfouz

I love Sufism as I love beautiful poetry, but it is not the answer. Sufism is like a mirage in the desert. It says to you, come and sit, relax and enjoy yourself for a while.

— Naguib Mahfouz

It is an indication of truth's jealousy that it has not made for anyone a path to it, and that it has not deprived anyone of the hope of attaining it, and it has left people running in the deserts of perplexity and drowning in the seas of doubt; and he who thinks he has attained it, it dissociates itself from, and he who thinks he has dissociated himself from it has lost his way.

— Naguib Mahfouz