Ashish Bihani > Ashish's Quotes

“Memory is a snare, pure and simple; it alters, it subtly rearranges the past to fit the present.”
― Mario Vargas Llosa

“It is really hard to be lonely very long in a world of words. Even if you don't have friends somewhere, you still have language, and it will find you and wrap its little syllables around you and suddenly there will be a story to live in.”
― Naomi Shihab Nye, I'll Ask You Three Times, Are You OK?: Tales of Driving and Being Driven – A Traveling Poet's Funny and Moving Young Adult Stories

“You fight, work, sweat, nearly kill yourself, sometimes do kill yourself, trying to accomplish something — and you can’t. Not from any fault of yours. You simply can do nothing, neither great nor little — not a thing in the world — not even marry an old maid, or get a wretched 600-ton cargo of coal to its port of destination.”
― Joseph Conrad, Youth, a Narrative

“Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.”
― Karl Popper

“Motto"

In the dark times
Will there also be singing?
Yes, there will also be singing.
About the dark times.”
― Bertolt Brecht

“If we do not know or even want to know the aims that the artist was pursuing through his work – his aim to inform, to convince, to influence people – then we do not get much farther in understanding his art than the ignorant spectator who judges a football game simply by the beauty of the players’ movement.”
― Arnold Hauser

“गुलियाना के चेहरे की ओर देखती हुई मैं सोचने लगी कि इस धरती पर वे घर कब कब बनेंगे जिनके दरवाज़े तारों की चाबियों से खुलते हों.
कहानी 'गुलियाना का एक ख़त' से”
― Amrita Pritam, मेरी प्रिय कहानियाँ [Meri Priya Kahaniyaan]

“वह धरती नरक होती है जहाँ महुआ नहीं उगता.
कहानी "उधड़ी हुई कहानियाँ" से”
― Amrita Pritam, मेरी प्रिय कहानियाँ [Meri Priya Kahaniyaan]

“Being a woman is a terribly difficult trade since it consists principally of dealings with men.”
― Joseph Conrad, Chance

“We live as we dream--alone....”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

There is another theory which states that this has already happened.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“...count no man happy till he dies, free of pain at last.”
― Sophocles, Oedipus Rex

“Lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things, is the proper aim of Art.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Decay of Lying

“The past is never dead. It's not even past.”
― William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun

“Throughout this book we have repeatedly asked what makes humans superior to other animals. Dataism has a new and simple answer. In themselves, human experiences are not superior at all to the experiences of wolves or elephants. One bit of data is as good as another. However, a human can write a poem about his experience and post it online, thereby enriching the global data-processing system. That makes his bits count. A wolf cannot do this.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow

“जिसका रोहिताश्व
मारा गया हो,
क्या तुम उसे
विश्वास दिला सकते हो
कि तुम
रोहिताश्व नहीं हो?”
― Shrikant Verma, Magadh

“सीढियां समाप्त नहीं
होतीं
उन्नति की हो
अथवा
अवनति की”
― Shrikant Verma, Magadh

“A man writes because he is tormented, because he doubts. He needs to constantly prove to himself and the others that he’s worth something. And if I know for sure that I’m a genius? Why write then? What the hell for?”
― Andrei Tarkovsky

“A man is a god in ruins.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“दूर कहीं मोरनोन के परकोटों पर तुरही बज रही थी. तब गॉलम चुप होकर पीछे खिसका और गड्ढे में उतर गया.
"और इंसान मोर्डोर आ रहे हैं" उसने दबी, भयभीत आवाज़ में कहा. "अँधेरे से भरे चेहरे. कभी ऐसे इंसान नहीं देखे स्मीगॉल ने, ना! वो भयानक हैं. उनकी अँधेरी ऑंखें हैं, लम्बे काले बाल, और कानों में सोने की बालियाँ; हाओ, बहुत सारा सुन्दर सोना. कुछ के गालों पर लाल रंग पुता है, और लाल ही उनके चोगे हैं, उनके भालों के सिरे भी; और उनके पास बड़ी गोल ढालें हैं, काली-पीली, बड़ी-बड़ी शूलों जड़ी. अच्छे नहीं है, बड़े विशाल, क्रूर दिखाई पड़ने वाले लोग हैं वो. ओर्कों जितने ही बुरे, और भी ज़्यादा भीमकाय. स्मीगॉल को लगता है कि वो दक्षिण की विशाल नदी की तरफ़ से आये हैं: वहाँ उस रस्ते पर. वहाँ से काल दरवाज़े की ओर बढ़ गए; पर शायद कई और आएंगे.
हमेशा और लोग आते रहते हैं मोर्डोर को. एक दिन सारे लोग यहीं आ जाएँगे.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“The reward for toil had been more toil. If you dug the best ditches, they gave you a bigger shovel.”
― Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum

“If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most fully developed some of its choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered over the greatest problems of life, and has found solutions of some of them which well deserve the attention even of those who have studied Plato and Kant, I should point to India. And if I were to ask myself from what literature we who have been nurtured almost exclusively on the thoughts of Greeks and Romans, and of the Semitic race, the Jewish, may draw the corrective which is most wanted in order to make our inner life more perfect, more comprehensive, more universal, in fact more truly human a life... again I should point to India.”
― Max Müller, India: What Can It Teach Us