Rifat Pial > Rifat's Quotes

“Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“The question is not what you look at, but what you see.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last dingdong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.”
― William Faulkner, Nobel Prize in Literature Acceptance Speech, 1949

“Nobody sees anybody truly but all through the flaws of their own egos. That is the way we all see ...each other in life. Vanity, fear, desire, competition-- all such distortions within our own egos-- condition our vision of those in relation to us. Add to those distortions to our own egos the corresponding distortions in the egos of others, and you see how cloudy the glass must become through which we look at each other. That's how it is in all living relationships except when there is that rare case of two people who love intensely enough to burn through all those layers of opacity and see each other's naked hearts.”
― Tennessee Williams

“I like grit, I like love and death, I'm tired of irony.”
― Jim Harrison

“The sun never set on the British empire, an Indian nationalist later sardonically commented, because even God couldn’t trust the Englishman in the dark”
― Shashi Tharoor, An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India

“When I am king they shall not have bread and shelter only, but also teachings out of books, for a full belly is little worth where the mind is starved.”
― Mark Twain, The Prince and the Pauper

“Ain't this been a hell of a time?”
― Larry McMurtry , Leaving Cheyenne

“Life changes in the instant. The ordinary instant.”
― Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).”
― Mark Twain

“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“I think the saddest people always try their hardest to make people happy because they know what it’s like to feel absolutely worthless and they don’t want anyone else to feel like that.”
― Robin Williams

“A very bad murderer,” I said. “Like Shakespeare’s Second Murderer in that scene in King Richard III. The fellow that had certain dregs of conscience, but still wanted the money, and in the end didn’t do the job at all because he couldn’t make up his mind. Such murderers are very dangerous. They have to be removed.”
― Raymond Chandler, Farewell My Lovely

“In reality, the laborer belongs to capital before he has sold himself to capital. His economic bondage is both brought about and concealed by the periodic sale of himself, by his change of masters, and by the oscillation in the market price of labor power. Capitalist production, therefore, under its aspect of a continuous connected process, of a process of reproduction, produces not only commodities, not only surplus value, but it also produces and reproduces the capitalist relation; on the one side the capitalist, on the other the wage-laborer.”
― Karl Marx, Das Kapital

“The Hindus criticise the Mahomedans for having spread their religion by the use of the sword. They also ridicule Christianity on the score of the Inquisition.

But really speaking, who is better and more worthy of our respect—the Mahomedans and Christians who attempted to thrust down the throats of unwilling persons what they regarded as necessary for their salvation, or the Hindu who would not spread the light, who would endeavour to keep others in darkness, who would not consent to share his intellectual and social inheritance with those who are ready and willing to make it a part of their own make-up?

I have no hesitation in saying that if the Mahomedan has been cruel, the Hindu has been mean; and meanness is worse than cruelty.”
― B.R. Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste

“The aim of life was meat. Life itself was meat. Life lived on life. There were the eaters and the eaten. The law was: EAT OR BE EATEN. He did not formulate the law in clear, set terms and moralize about it. He did not even think the law; he merely lived the law without thinking about it at all.”
― Jack London, White Fang

“Above all, always be capable of feeling deeply any injustice committed against anyone, anywhere in the world.”
― Che Guevara

“A country that does not know how to read and write is easy to deceive.”
― Che Guevara

“Many will call me an adventurer, and that I am...only one of a different sort: one who risks his skin to prove his truths.”
― Ernesto Guevara

“But the autonomy or self-government of the community cannot exist without the autonomy of the factory, the school, and the city, of every form of social life.”
― Carlo Levi, Christ Stopped at Eboli: The Story of a Year

“Years ago, I tried to top everybody, but I don't anymore. I realized it was killing conversation. When you're always trying for a topper you aren't really listening. It ruins communication”
― Groucho Marx, The Essential Groucho: Writings by, for, and about Groucho Marx

“Retain your progress within yourself. Not everyone is a fan of God.”
― Ashtottara

“My doubts stand in a circle around every word, I see them before I see the word, but what then! I do not see the word at all, I invent it.”
― Franz Kafka, Diaries of Franz Kafka 1914-1923

“মানুষ কি চায় — উন্নতি, না আনন্দ? উন্নতি করিয়া কি হইবে যদি তাহাতে আনন্দ না থাকে? আমি এমন কত লোকের কথা জানি, যাহারা জীবনে উন্নতি করিয়াছে বটে, কিন্তু আনন্দকে হারাইয়াছে। অতিরিক্ত ভোগে মনোবৃত্তির ধার ক্ষইয়া ভোঁতা — এখন আর কিছুতেই তেমন আনন্দ পায় না, জীবন তাহাদের নিকট একঘেয়ে, একরঙা, অর্থহীন। মন শান-বাঁধানো — রস ঢুকিতে পায় না।”
― Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, আরণ্যক

“মানুষের আয়ু মানুষের জীবনের ভুল মাপকাঠি। দশ বছরের জীবন সে উপভোগ করেছে দেড় বছরে।”
― Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, চাঁদের পাহাড়

“যে জিনিস যত দুষ্প্রাপ্য মানুষের মনের কাছে তাহার মূল্য অনেক বেশি। এ কথা খুবই সত্য যে, এই মূল্য মানুষের মনগড়া একটি কৃত্রিম মূল্য, প্রার্থিত জিনিসের সত্যকার উৎকর্ষ বা অপকর্ষের সঙ্গে এর কোন সম্বন্ধ নাই। কিন্তু জগতের অধিকাংশ জিনিসের উপরই একটি কৃত্রিম মূল্য আরোপ করিয়াই তো আমরা তাকে বড় বা ছোট করি।”
― Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, আরণ্যক

“এই জনহীন প্রান্তর, এই রহস্যময়ী রাত্রি, অচেনা নক্ষত্রে ভরা আকাশ, এই বিপদের আশঙ্কা - এইতো জীবন। শান্ত নিরাপদ জীবন নিরীহ কেরানীর জীবন হতে পারে - তার নয় -”
― Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay

“জ্যোৎস্না আরো ফুটিয়াছে, নক্ষত্রদল জ্যোৎস্নালোকে প্রায় অদৃশ্য, চারিধারে চাহিয়া মনে হয় এ সে পৃথিবী নয় এতদিন যাহাকে জানিতাম, এ স্বপ্নভূমি, এই দিগন্তব্যাপী জ্যোৎস্নায় অপার্থিব জীবেরা এখানে নামে গভীর রাত্রে, তারা তপস্যার বস্তু, কল্পনা ও স্বপ্নের বস্তু, বনের ফুল যারা ভালবাসে না, সুন্দরকে চেনে না, দিগ্বলয়রেখা যাদের কখনো হাতছানি দিয়া ডাকে নাই, তাদের কাছে এ পৃথিবী ধরা দেয় না কোনো কালেই।”
― Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, আরণ্যক

“জীবনকে খুব কম মানুষেই চেনে। জন্মগত ভুল সংস্কারের চোখে সবাই জীবনকে বুঝিবার চেষ্টা করে, দেখিবার চেষ্টা করে, দেখাও হয় না, বোঝাও হয় না। তাছাড়া সে চেষ্টাই বা ক'জন করে?”
― Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, APARAJITA – A NOVEL

“কান্টের মতো দার্শনিক একটা ছোট্ট শহরে ছিলেন জার্মানির, এত বড় চিন্তা করবার খোরাক পেয়েছিলেন সেখানে থেকেই। শহরে না থাকলেই লোক পুরোনো হয় বলে মনে কর কেন? নতুন আর পুরোনো অত্যন্ত সাধারণ ধরনের শ্রেণীবিভাগ। নতুন মাত্রেই ভালো নয়, পুরোনো মাত্রই মূল্যহীন নয়।”
― Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, অভিযাত্রিক