Immaculée Ilibagiza · 214 pages
Rating: (33.7K votes)
“The love of a single heart can make a world of difference.”
― Immaculée Ilibagiza, quote from Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust
“I knew that my heart and mind would always be tempted to feel anger--to find blame and hate. But I resolved that when the negative feelings came upon me, I wouldn't wait for them to grow or fester. I would always turn immediately to the Source of all true power: I would turn to God and let His love and forgiveness protect and save me.”
― Immaculée Ilibagiza, quote from Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust
“But I came to learn that God never shows us something we aren't ready to understand. Instead, He lets us see what we need to see, when we need to see it. He'll wait until our eyes and hearts are open to Him, and then when we're ready, He will plant our feet on the path that's best for us...but it's up to us to do the walking.”
― Immaculée Ilibagiza, quote from Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust
“They can only kill us once.”
― Immaculée Ilibagiza, quote from Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust
“Instead of negotiating or begging for mercy, [my brother Damascene] challenged them to kill him. "Go ahead," he said. "What are you waiting for? Today is my day to go to God. I can feel Him all around us. He is watching, waiting to take me home. Go ahead--finish your work and send me to paradise. I pity you for killing people like it's some kind of child's game. Murder is no game: If you offend God, you will pay for your fun. The blood of the innocent people you cut down will follow you to your reckoning. But I am praying for you. . . I pray that you see the evil you're doing and ask God's forgiveness before it's too late.”
― Immaculée Ilibagiza, quote from Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust
“I realized that my battle to survive this war would have to be fought inside of me.”
― Immaculée Ilibagiza, quote from Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust
“Author says her father was so diplomatic that when people came to him for solutions, people not only accepted them, but they believed they thought of them.”
― Immaculée Ilibagiza, quote from Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust
“The author recognizes the power of the persecuting tribe referring to members of hers consistently as "snakes" or "roaches". This dehumanizing language, she realizes, seeps into the subconscious and makes it easier to forget that fellow humans were created in God's image.”
― Immaculée Ilibagiza, quote from Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust
“This is the same power that I feel propelling me forward into the next phase of my life. God saved my soul and spared my life for a reason: He left me to tell my story to others and show as many people as possible the healing power of His love and forgiveness.”
― Immaculée Ilibagiza, quote from Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust
“I came to learn that God never shows us something we aren’t ready to understand. Instead, He lets us see what we need to see, when we need to see it. He’ll wait until our eyes and hearts are open to Him, and then when we’re ready, He will plant our feet on the path that’s best for us . . . but it’s up to us to do the walking.”
― Immaculée Ilibagiza, quote from Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust
“The world had seen the same thing happen many times before. After it happened in Nazi Germany, all the big, powerful countries swore, “Never again!” But here we were, six harmless females huddled in darkness, marked for execution because we were born Tutsi. How had history managed to repeat itself? How had this evil managed to surface once again? Why had the devil been allowed to walk among us unchallenged, poisoning hearts and minds until it was too late?”
― Immaculée Ilibagiza, quote from Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust
“Cuando yo es imposible para nosotros cambiar una situacion, el reto es cambiarnos a nosotros mismos.”
― Immaculée Ilibagiza, quote from Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust
“I see thunderstorms around us now, but these are just baby storms,” the psychic told her. “The mother storm is coming. When she arrives, her lightning will scorch the land, her thunder will deafen us, and her heavy rain will drown us all. The storm will last for three months and many will die. Those who escape will find no one to turn to—every friendly face will have perished.”
― Immaculée Ilibagiza, quote from Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust
“We carried on like that through letters and phone calls for the next two years. And things didn’t change when Aimable graduated as a doctor of veterinary medicine”
― Immaculée Ilibagiza, quote from Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust
“That night I prayed with a clear conscience and a clean heart. For the first time since I entered the bathroom, I slept in peace.”
― Immaculée Ilibagiza, quote from Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust
“However, Roméo Dallaire, the Canadian general in charge of the UN peacekeepers, refused to obey his orders to leave and remained with a couple hundred soldiers. He was a brave and moral man, but he was also alone in a sea of killers. We heard him often on the radio begging for someone, anyone, to send troops to Rwanda to stop the slaughter, but no one listened to him. Belgium, our country’s former colonial ruler, had been the first to pull its soldiers out of the country; meanwhile, the United States wouldn’t even acknowledge that the genocide was happening!”
― Immaculée Ilibagiza, quote from Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust
“HAMM
Open the window.
CLOV
What for?
HAMM
I want to hear the sea.
CLOV
You wouldn't hear it.
HAMM Even if you opened the window?
CLOV
No.
HAMM
Then it's not worth opening it?
CLOV
No.
HAMM(violently)
Then open it!”
― Samuel Beckett, quote from Endgame & Act Without Words
“Art history is so often about looking at the people who made the art; but I realized at that moment there were also stories to be told about the people who made the things that made the art. My”
― Victoria Finlay, quote from Color: A Natural History of the Palette
“You run a grave risk, my boy," said the magician, "of being turned into a piece of bread, and toasted.”
― T.H. White, quote from The Once and Future King (The Once and Future King, #1-5)
“He was sorry, genuinely sorry, for the pain she was in. Yet the revelation had caused certain other feelings—feelings he usually kept under tight rein, considering them both misguided and dangerous—to flex inside him, to test their strength against their restraining bonds.”
― Robert Galbraith, quote from Career of Evil
“The world ain't ready for true black genius. In every nigger is a cup of African blood from kings and queens of divine nature, mathematicians, craftsmen, men and women of the land. I have known some sisters and brothers would scare Einstein back into East European caves with the magnificence of their minds. We are a people with a practical nature and great vision. We have built nations, discovered treasures for everyday use. Our people are a great race of people, and though the Europeans raped and plundered, we have kept inner riches. You got a cup of African blood and that mean something, means you got a responsibility to be proud of it and use your talents or suffer self-destruction.”
― Shay Youngblood, quote from Black Girl in Paris
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