Mariama Bâ Quotes

A Toubab can’t be a proper daughter-in-law. She’ll only have eyes for her man. We’ll mean nothing to her.

The most humble of huts is pleasing when it is clean; the most luxurious setting offers no attraction if it is covered in dust.

Was he a possible partner for Mireille? Could he assume such a mutation.

We saw everything through the same eyes before we were married… But now we seem to be divided over everything.

“Friendship has splendors that love knows not. It grows stronger when crossed, whereas obstacles kill love. Friendship resists time, which wearies and severs couples. It has heights unknown to love."

In a word, a man's success depends on feminine support.

In the face of misogyny and injustice, the only hope is escape.

Love knows no bounds, but sometimes society does.

Each life has its share of heroism, an obscure heroism, born of abdication, of renunciation and acceptance under the merciless whip of fate.

The flavour of life is love. The salt of life is also love.

Try explaining to them that a working woman is no less responsible for her home. Try explaining to them that nothing is done if you do not step in, that you have to see to everything, do everything all over again: cleaning up, cooking, ironing. There are the children to be washed, the husband to be looked after. The working woman has a dual task, of which both halves, equally arduous, must be reconciled.

Whenever he felt himself beginning to fancy any girl, after the Ouleymatou experience, the memory of her mocking indifference and his own disillusionment had made him fiercely determined to nip any emotional attachment in the bud.

Ousmane Gueye, who had mistrusted all women, threw himself at the mercy of a woman, and a white woman at that.

A woman must marry the man who loves her, but never the one she loves; that is the secret of lasting happiness.

The word 'happiness' does indeed have meaning, doesn't it? I shall go out in search of it.