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“A problem becomes a problem only if you believe it to be so. And often others see you as you see yourself.”
Three dangerous moments will come to you. The first will be just before your wedding: at that time, hold back your question. The second will be when your husbands are at the height of their power: at that time, hold back your laughter. The third will be when you’re shamed as you’d never imagined possible: at that time, hold back your curse. Maybe it will mitigate the catastrophes to come.”
Remember that, little sister: wait for a man to avenge your honor, and you’ll wait forever.
the power of a man is like a bull’s charge, while the power of a woman moves aslant, like a serpent seeking its prey.
“As for being pawns,” Krishna was saying, “aren’t we all pawns in the hands of Time, the greatest player of them all?”
“Love comes like lightning, and disappears the same way.
A princess has no privacy.
unknown is always more fascinating than the known.”
No matter how skilled they were at battle, ultimately it would not help them because they were forever defeated by their conscience.
They’d say I deserved every punishment I received. Still others would admire me for being true to dharma, whatever that means. But I did it only because I couldn’t bear to see my brother die.
Can our actions change our destiny? Or are they like sand piled against the breakage in a dam, merely delaying the inevitable?
A woman can never use up all the tears of her life. How do I know this? Because Kunti would weep again—and I would weep with her.)
Expectations are like hidden rocks in your path—all they do is trip you up.
Was he a saint, or merely lacking in common sense? In either case, it was most annoying.
didn’t dare reveal this dark flower that refused to be uprooted from my heart.
Her feelings for karna
A well-meaning man, Dhai Ma liked to say, is more dangerous because he believes in the rightness of what he does. Give me an honest rascal any day!
In order for a victory to occur, someone had to lose. For one person to gain his desire, many had to give up theirs.
Distance is a great promoter of harmony: a fact that women who find themselves in situations similar to mine should keep in mind.)
Dhri’s tutor was of the opinion that virtuous women were sent directly into their next birth, where, if they were lucky, they reincarnated as men. But I thought that if lokas existed at all, good women would surely go to one where men were not allowed so that they could be finally free of male demands. However, I prudently kept this theory to myself.
I’m a queen. Daughter of Drupad, sister of Dhristadyumna. Mistress of the greatest palace on earth. I can’t be gambled away like a bag of coins, or summoned to court like a dancing girl.
The wife is the property of the husband, no less so than a cow or a slave.
A woman doesn’t think that way. I would have thrown myself forward to save them if it had been in my power that day. I wouldn’t have cared what anyone thought. The choice they made in the moment of my need changed something in our relationship. I no longer depended on them so completely in the future. And when I took care to guard myself from hurt, it was as much from them as from our enemies.
“A situation in itself,” he said, “is neither happy nor unhappy. It’s only your response to it that causes your sorrow.
The humiliated enemy is the most dangerous one.
Krishna had advised me over and again: Let the past go. Be at ease. Allow the future to arrive at its own pace, unfurling its secrets when it will.
Victory—not in the upcoming battle but against the six inner enemies that plague us all: lust, anger, greed, ignorance, arrogance, and envy.
ultimately only the witness—and not the actors—knows the truth.”
How little we know our own reputations, I thought with a bitter smile.
Just as we cast off worn clothes and wear new ones, when the time arrives, the soul casts off the body and finds a new one to work out its karma. Therefore the wise grieve neither for the living nor the dead.
The pleasures that arise from sense-objects are bound to end, and thus they are only sources of pain. Don’t get attached to them.
When a man reaches a state where honor and dishonor are alike to him, then he is considered supreme. Strive to gain such a state.
Because of anger and desire, our two direst enemies.
How a promise—made to another or to oneself—could paralyze a life! How pride had kept them from admitting their mistakes—and thus from the happiness that might have been theirs.
This was the woman who had set a helpless baby afloat on a midnight river to save her reputation, thus beginning the chain of Karna’s misery.
Karna was debilitated by his own knowledge. Because where Arjun faced a hated enemy, Karna was facing his younger brother.
To see a loved one in pain is more wrenching than to bear that pain yourself.
There was an unexpected freedom in finding out that one wasn’t as important as one had always assumed!
