“Living is no laughing matter: you must live with great seriousness like a squirrel, for example.”

— Nazim Hikmet · Life quote

Poet · 1902 – 1963

Turkish poet often called the 'romantic revolutionary'; imprisoned for his politics, he wrote some of Turkish literature's most loved poems.

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There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children.

We have on this land that which makes life worth living.

But as long as you remember what you have seen, then nothing is gone. As long as you remember, it is part of this story we have together.

What perishes is time; we are eternal.

Once I dreamed I was a butterfly, and now I no longer know whether I am a man dreaming I am a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming I am a man.

Life should be great rather than long.

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent.

It is because I dive into the abyss that I am beginning to love the abyss I am made of.