Nabila Tabassum Chowdhury > Recent Status Updates

"Since she was such a good cook, why would she want to think?"

"The sailor sails on, though he knows he will never touch the stars that guide him."

"Ever more mouths and ever less food. Ever less forest and ever more desert. Too much rain or no rain at all."

"The only question unanswered is why poor people are poor. Could it be because we are fed by their hunger and clothed by their nakedness?"

"Hunger, which kills silently, kills the silent."

"Today’s cities are immense jails holding prisoners of fear, where fortresses masquerade as homes and armor as clothing."

"Hunting Jews has always been a European sport. Now the Palestinians, who never played it, are paying the bill."

"And under his breath, they say, he murmured the phrase that made him famous for all time."

"The most enthusiastic punishers were also the most enthusiastic sinners."

"The bureaucracy of pain tortures in order to perpetuate the power of the powers it serves. A confession extracted by torture is worth little or nothing. But in the torture chamber the powerful do drop their masks. By torturing, they confess that fear is their daily bread."

"An Arab poet, who wrote about the Arabs from the Arab point of view, described it thus: There are two kinds of people in this land: those who have brains but no religion and those who have religion but no brains."

"The Christians led by Bishop Priscillian had been guilty: they danced and sang and celebrated darkness and fire, they turned the mass into a pagan festival from Galicia, the suspicious land where Priscillian was born, they lived in community and in poverty, they repudiated the alliance of the Church with the powers that be, they condemned slavery, and they allowed women to preach, as priests."

"Buddha did not believe in gods or in God, but his devotees made him one."

"And by decision of the Catholic Church, the Vatican was built in the exact location where the festival of glee used to reach its zenith. Now, in that vast plaza where the guffaws of the multitudes once resonated, we hear the grave voice of the pope reciting passages from the Bible, a book where no one ever laughs."

"The sale of sexual favors was a reliable source of wealth. So was the sale of political or bureaucratic favors. These activities shared a single name. Pimps and lobbyists were both called proxenetas."

"Let’s turn our inescapable mortality, Epicurius suggested, into an eternal feast."

"rather than scorning the gods, she believed the gods scorn us and spoil our ephemeral human joys."

"In the little there is, lies all that was."

"Pliny the Elder, the empire’s greatest scientific authority, demonstrated that a menstruating woman soured new wine, sterilized crops, caused seeds and fruits to wither, killed grafted plants and swarms of bees, tarnished bronze, and made dogs go crazy."

"Tradition orders widows to throw themselves into the fire where the dead husband’s body burns, but today few if any are willing to obey that command. For centuries or millennia they were willing, and they were many. In contrast, there is no instance ever in the whole history of India of a husband leaping into the pyre of his deceased wife."

"And when the earth trembled, in soft vibrations or devastating earthquakes, no one doubted: “It is she.”"

"Then history brought more sad news: the division of labor assigned nearly all tasks to the females so that we males could dedicate ourselves to mutual extermination,"

"Women sketched their words on garments and fans. The hands that embroidered were not free. The symbols were."

"Lao Tse, village philosopher, believed that the richer a nation is, the poorer it becomes."

"Twenty-five centuries ago, General Sun Tzu of China wrote the first treatise on military tactics and strategy. His sage advice is still heeded today not just on battlefields but in business, where blood tends to flow more freely."

"“My falcon rises high above the kingly banner into all eternity.” Thirty-four hundred years later, her tomb was found. Empty."

"In Rome, she founded temples for the poor alongside bordellos. The temples were razed by imperial order, their priests crucified, but like stubborn mules they came back to life again and again."

"Men will record, but they won’t recall. They will repeat, but they will not live. They will learn of many things, but they won’t understand a thing.”"

"And he became immortal. Until he died."

"He discovered that his valiant friend was made of clay, and that he too was made of clay."