The Blind Owl Quotes

“I thought to myself: if it’s true that every person has a star in the sky, mine must be distant, dim, and absurd. Perhaps I never had a star.”
― Sadegh Hedayat, The Blind Owl

“زندگی من مثل یک شمع آب می شود، نه اشتباه می کنم-مثل یک کنده ی هیزم تر است که گوشه ی دیگدان افتاده و به آتش هیزم های دیگر برشته و زغال شده، ولی نه سوخته و نه تر و تازه مانده، فقط از دود و دم دیگران خفه شده”
― صادق هدایت / Sadegh Hedayat, The Blind Owl

“I write only for my shadow which is cast on the wall in front of the light. I must introduce myself to it.”
― Sadegh Hedayat, The Blind Owl

“در زندگی زخمهایی است که روح را آهسته در انزوا می خورد ومیتراشد”
― صادق هدایت / Sadegh Hedayat, The Blind Owl

“Ugh! How many stories about love, copulation, marriage and death already exist, not one of which tells the truth! How sick I am of well-constructed plots and brilliant writing!”
― Sadegh Hedayat, The Blind Owl

“There are sores which slowly erode the mind in solitude like a kind of canker.”
― Sadegh Hedayat, The Blind Owl

“The person that I had been existed no longer. If I had been able to conjure him up and speak to him he would not have listened to me and, if he had, would not have understood what I said. He was like someone whom I had known once, but he was no part of me.”
― Sadegh Hedayat, The Blind Owl

“إنه الموت فقط الذي لا يكذب أبدا ، إن حضور الموت يحطم كل الأوهام ، إننا جميعا أطفال الموت ، و الموت هو خلاصنا من خداع الحياة ، إنه الموت الذي يقف علي حافة الحياة ينادينا و يؤمي إلينا”
― صادق هدایت, البومة العمياء

“My one fear is that tomorrow I may die without having come to know myself”
― Sadegh Hedayat, The Blind Owl

“در طی تجربيات زندگی به اين مطلب برخوردم که چه ورطه ی هولناکی ميان من و ديگران وجود دارد
و فهميدم که تا ممكن است بايد خاموش شد، تا ممكن است بايد افكار خودم را برای خودم نگه دارم”
― صادق هدایت, The Blind Owl

“Life as it proceeds reveals, cooly and dispassionately, what lies behind the mask that each man wears. It would seem that everyone possesses several faces. Some people use only one all the time, and it then, naturally, becomes soiled and wrinkled. These are the thrifty sort. Others look after their masks in the hope of passing them on to their descendants. Others again are constantly changing their faces. But all of them, when they reach old age, realise one day that the mask they are wearing is their last and that it will soon be worn out, and then, from behind the last mask, the real face appears.”
― Sadegh Hedayat, The Blind Owl

“In life there are certain sores that, like a canker, gnaw at the soul in solitude and diminish it.”
― Sadegh Hedayat, The Blind Owl

“There are people whose death agonies begin at the age of twenty, while others die only at the very end, calmly and peacefully, like a lamp in which all the oil has been consumed.”
― Sadegh Hedayat, The Blind Owl

“From the bottom of my heart I desired to surrender myself to the sleep of oblivion. If only oblivion were attainable, if it could last forever, if my eyes as they closed could gently transcend sleep and dissolve into non-being and I should lose consciousness of my existence for all time to come, if it were possible for my being to dissolve in one drop of ink, in one bar of music, in one ray of colored light, and then these waves and forms were to grow and grow to such infinite size that in the end they faded and disappeared—then I should have attained my desire.”
― Sadegh Hedayat, The Blind Owl

“We are the children of death and it is death that rescues us from the deceptions of life.”
― Sadegh Hedayat, The Blind Owl

“هزاران سال است که همین حرفها را زده اند، همین جماع ها را کرده اند، همین گرفتاری های بچه گانه را داشته اند. آیا سرتاسر زندگی یک قصه مضحک، یک متل باورنکردنی و احمقانه نیست؟ آیا من فسانه و قصه خودم را نمی نویسم؟ قصه فقط یک راه فرار برای آرزوهای ناکام است.”
― صادق هدایت, The Blind Owl

“I have finally learned that I must remain silent as much as possible. I must always keep my thoughts to myself.”
― Sadegh Hedayat, The Blind Owl

“The sun, like a golden knife, was steadily paring away the edge of the shade beside the walls.The streets were enclosed between old, whitewashed walls. Everywhere were peace and stillness, as though all the elements were obeying the sacred law of calm and silence imposed by the blazing heat. It seemed as though mystery was everywhere and my lungs hardly dared to inhale the air.”
― Sadegh Hedayat, The Blind Owl

“لا مال عندي تستولي عليه السلطة و لا دين لدي ليأخذه الشيطان”
― صادق هدایت, البومة العمياء

“أنا أكتب فقط من أجل حاجتي إلي الكتابة التي صارت ضرورية لي ، أنا محتاج ، محتاج أكثر من ذي قبل أن أربط أفكاري بموجودي الخيالي ، بظلي ، هذا الظل المشئوم الذي ينحني علي الحائط أمام السراج ذي الفتيل و يبدو أنه يقرأ بدقة كل ما أكتبه و يتجرعه ،هذا الظل لا ريب يفهم أفضل مني”
― صادق هدایت, البومة العمياء

“از دور ریختن عقایدی که به من تلقین شده بود، آرامش مخصوصی در خودم حس می‌کردم.”
― صادق هدایت, The Blind Owl

“و هذا الاحساس كان قد استيقظ في نفسي منذ زمن بعيد ، و هو أنني كنت أتحلل و أنا حي ، و لم يكن هناك توافق بين جسمي وقلبي ، وليس هذا فحسب ، بل بين روحي و قلبي ، كنت اجتاز دائما نوعا من الفصام و التحلل الغريب ، و أحيانا كنت أفكر في أشياء لا أستطيع أنا نفسي أن أصدقها”
― صادق هدایت, البومة العمياء

“I was growing inward incessantly; like an animal that hibernates during the wintertime, I could hear other peoples' voices with my ears; my own voice, however, I could hear only in my throat. The loneliness and the solitude that lurked behind me were like a condensed, thick, eternal night, like one of those nights with a dense, persistent, sticky darkness which waits to pounce on unpopulated cities filled with lustful and vengeful dreams. My whole being could now be summed up in my voice―an insane, absolute record. The force that, out of loneliness, brings two individuals together to procreate has its roots in this same insanity which exists in everyone and which is mingled with a sense of regret, tending gradually toward death...Only death does not tell lies! The presence of death annihilates all that is imaginary. We are the offspring of death and death delivers us from the tantalizing, fraudulent attractions of life; it is death that beckons us from the depths of life.”
― Sadegh Hedayat, The Blind Owl

“For some reason all activity, all happiness on the part of other people made me feel like vomiting. I was aware that my own life was finished and was slowly and painfully guttering out. What earthly reason had I to concern myself with the lives of the fools, the rabble-people who were fit and healthy, ate well, slept well, and copulated well and who had never experienced a particle of my sufferings or felt the wings of death every minute brushing against their faces?”
― Sadegh Hedayat, The Blind Owl

“لا أدري لماذا كانت حياة الآخرين و مساراتهم المتنوعة تصيبني بالغثيان في حين أنني كنت أعلم أن حياتي قد انتهت ، و أنها تذوي بطريقة مؤلمة و ببطء”
― صادق هدایت, البومة العمياء

“اين دختر، نه، اين فرشته، برای من سرچشمه ی تعجب و الهام ناگفتنی بود. وجودش
لطيف و دست نزدنی بود. او بود که حس پرستش را در من توليد کرد. من مطمئنم که نگاه يک نفر بيگانه، يك
نفر آدم معمولی او را کنفت و پژمرده ميكرد”
― صادق هدایت, The Blind Owl

“What comforted me was the prospect of oblivion after death. The thought of an after-life frightened and fatigued me. I had never been able to adapt myself to the world in which I was now living. Of what use would another world be to me ? I felt that this world had not been made for me but for a tribe of brazen, money-grubbing, blustering louts, sellers of conscience, hungry of eye and heart—for people, in fact, who had been created in its own likeness and who fawned and grovelled before the mighty of earth and heaven as the hungry dog outside the butcher’s shop wagged his tail in the hope of receiving a fragment of offal. The thought of an after-life frightened and fatigued me. No, I had no desire to see all these loathsome worlds peopled with repulsive faces. Was God such a parvenu that He insisted on my looking over His collection of worlds ? I must speak as I think. If I had to go through another life, then I hoped that my mind and senses would be numb. In that event I could exist without effort and weariness. I would live my life in the shadow of the columns of some lingam temple. I would retire into some corner where the light of the sun would never strike my eyes and the words of men and the noise of life never grate upon my ears.”
― Sadegh Hedayat, The Blind Owl

“I saw that pain and disease existed and at the same time that they were void of sense and meaning. Among the men of the rabble I had become a creature of a strange, unknown race, so much so that they had forgotten that I had once been part of their world. I had the dreadful sensation that I was not really alive or wholly dead. I was a living corpse, unrelated to the world of living people and at the same time deprived of the oblivion and peace of death.”
― Sadegh Hedayat, The Blind Owl

“و يبدو أن تصرفات الناس القدماء و أفكارهم وعاداتهم و رغباتهم التي انتقلت عن طريق الحكايات إلي الأجيال التالية كانت احدي واجبات الحياة ، منذ آلاف من السنين مضت يرددون هذه الكلمات ، و كانوا يزاولون الجماع بنفس الطريقة ، و كانت لهم كل اهتمامات الطفولة ، أليست الحياة بأكملها قصة مضحكة ، أسطورة حمقاء لا تصدق ؟”
― صادق هدایت, البومة العمياء

“إن ما كان يبعث في العزاء هو الأمل في العدم بعد الموت ، كانت فكرة الحياة بعد الموت تخيفني و تصيبني بالملل ، أنا حتي الآن لم أكن قد أنست إلي هذه الدنيا التي كنت أحيا فيها فبماذا تفيدني الحياة الآخري؟”
― صادق هدایت, البومة العمياء