Quotes from book
The Road to Mecca

Name: The Road to Mecca
Author: Muhammad Asad

Muhammad Asad

The Road to Mecca, also known as Road to Mecca or Road to Makkah, is the autobiography of Muslim scholar, intellectual, political theorist and spiritual writer Muhammad Asad.

“We allow ourselves to be blown by the winds because we do know what we want: our hearts know it, even if our thoughts are sometimes slow to follow- but in the end they do catch up with our hearts and then we think we have made a decision.”

Muhammad Asad book The Road to Mecca

Page 68.
The Road to Mecca (1954)

“While I thus cogitate in disquiet and perplexity, half submerged in dark waters of a well in an Arabian oasis, I suddenly hear a voice from the background of my memory, the voice of an old Kurdish nomad: If water stands motionless in a pool it grows stale and muddy, but when it moves and flows it becomes clear: so, too, man in his wanderings. Whereupon, as if by magic, all disquiet leaves me. I begin to look upon myself with distant eyes, as you might look at the pages of a book to read a story from them; and I begin to understand that my life could not have taken a different course. For when I ask myself, 'What is the sum total of my life?' somthing in me seems to answer, 'You have set out to exchange one world for another-to gain a new world for yourself in exchange for an old one which you never really possessed.”

Muhammad Asad book The Road to Mecca

And I know with startling clarity that such an undertaking might indeed take an entire lifetime.
Page 48.
The Road to Mecca (1954)

Similar authors

Muhammad Asad 35

Austro-Hungarian writer and academic 1900–1992

Imre Kertész 61

Hungarian writer

Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk 9

First Czechoslovak president

Zsa Zsa Gabor 4

Hungarian-American socialite and actress

Ivo Andrič 16

novelist, short story writer

Charles Bukowski 555

American writer

Peter Ustinov 59

English actor, writer, and dramatist

Ayn Rand 322

Russian-American novelist and philosopher

Julio Cortázar 29

Argentinian writer

Luciano De Crescenzo 1

Italian writer