It Does Not Die Quotes

“Nu-i acoperiţi pieptul –
Aş vrea să văd dacă inima lui mai bate
Acest trup trecător
Păstrează în el sănătatea
Nemuritoare a unui întreg indestructibil
Ce cântă şi merge
Pe o melodie imposibilă.
Încă mai ascult cântecele sale
Pe care nicio armă nu le poate străpunge
Şi nici focul nu le poate arde.
Îl voi vedea încă o dată
Dincolo de marea de lacrimi.”
― Maitreyi Devi, It Does Not Die

“O greseala te duce spre alta, o minciuna urmeaza alteia si astfel adevarul nu mai poate iesi la lumina.”
― Maitreyi Devi, It Does Not Die

“Oricat l-ar iubi cineva pe altcineva, cat de uşor il poate inşela, deoarece nimeni nu poate cunoaşte, fără să i se spună, gandurile altuia.”
― Maitreyi Devi, It Does Not Die

“Îmi aranjez părul şi, potrivindu-mi sari-ul, un cântec a început să murmure în mine: "am nectar în inimă, îl doreşti?”
― Maitreyi Devi, It Does Not Die

“No, poetry cannot be thrust upon anyone. It is not a bullet one shoots, it can touch the chord inside only if one is in the tune.”
― Maitreyi Devi, It Does Not Die

“When Rabindranath came to know him well, he wrote a poem called "The Good Man." This verse depicts my husband :

Maniram is really clever.
No jolt can shake him.
He is eager not to show off.
He keeps under cover his competence.
He is at ease only when he can hide himself in a corner.
He shuns that assembly
Where he is honoured.
He never says "Give me more"
And would not step on anyone even given the chance.
If he notices that the food is not enough
He says "Well, I am full today."
If there is no salt in the curry,
No one can guess it from his face.
If his friends deceive him
He says, "It's just a mistake."
When the debtor remains silent
He says "I have no urgency."
If he is beaten up
He says "The fault must have been mine!"

The essence and message of this poem is the message of the Gita : "He who is unperturbed at the time of trouble and unattached to the pleasures of life is a yogi.”
― Maitreyi Devi, It Does Not Die

“I was a simple little girl who sometimes played philosopher. I was no enigma. The mystery is your creation.”
― Maitreyi Devi, It Does Not Die

“Mircea, I am telling you, fantasy is beautiful and
truth is more beautiful, but half-truth is terrible.”
― Maitreyi Devi, It Does Not Die

“Uncover your face, O Truth, I want to meet you.”
― Maitreyi Devi, It Does Not Die

“People might ask, What have you not received—husband's love, respect in your father-in-law's house, freedom? I must admit I have no complaints. If I say I am sad because I could not discuss the poem of Rabindranath which came out in the last issue of Prabasi nor read out a poem to anyone for one full month, will anyone sympathise with me or weep over my fanciful sorrow? People will laugh at me.

Yet, I need so much what others don't want at all. There are some persons who are never satiated with worldly goods, whose aspirations never end, who are continuously searching for some fine gossamer uncatchable things that have no worldly value.

Who fashioned our minds in this way, so that we have become so different from so many? Rabindranath Thakur, who else? We who have seen this world through his songs and those who have not are strangers to each other. Our worlds do not move in the same rhythm.”
― Maitreyi Devi, It Does Not Die

“I used to wonder how those who love freedom could want to keep other in chains. But reason does not play a great part either in family life or in politics. The British say, "Rule, Britannia, Rule the waves, Britons never will be slaves"—but look at what they have done to others and then that is also their pride—"The sun never sets on the British Empire." Logic is seldom used.”
― Maitreyi Devi, It Does Not Die

“Human beings walk on the tightrope or on the razor's edge, you may say. If one knows the trick one will reach the destination, otherwise one falls midway and breaks one's neck.”
― Maitreyi Devi, It Does Not Die

“My senses were getting dimmed by the unearthly glow of suffering. In that half-asleep world I heard father's voice, "Pull down the shutters on her side. She might jump through the window." I said to myself I would never do such a thing. Life is beautiful; so is my sorrow.”
― Maitreyi Devi, It Does Not Die

“Two strong lights are burning, yet the figures are like shadows—I saw father; no, not he, but his silhouette moves towards my bookshelf, father is looking for some books. He picks up a book on Japanese mythology, bound in blue silk with a figure embossed in gold. Father opens it and tears off the first page—Mircea presented this to me. Then one by one he gets out all the books and tears off the pages where the two names are written —the giver and the taker of the gift. He could not find that page in Goethe's Life—it remained stuck to the cover—so that's all that remained as Mircea's memento. Father slowly tears the papers into shreds and flings them out the window. In any other house the books would have been destroyed. But that cannot be in our house. We also have a Genghis Khan. Only he does not burn books. He can burn human beings but not books. The book is his God.”
― Maitreyi Devi, It Does Not Die

“What can I do, Ru? He says if I insist, he will die. Do you want to kill your father? You don't love your father. Is that boy dearer to you than us?"

I am shocked to discover that I feel no concern for father's illness. On the contrary I am angry with him. He constantly keeps mother intimidated by the threat of his blood pressure and makes her bend to his will—so I beg into pray—why don't I have blood-pressure, O God—strike me with blood-pressure right at this moment!”
― Maitreyi Devi, It Does Not Die

“A young poetess suddenly attacked a senior poet saying that the elders had all become backdated and their poems were no more readable. My mother resented this arrogance. She told me later, "Won't this young lady herself ever get old? Does a poem lose its value simply because it was written in the past?”
― Maitreyi Devi, It Does Not Die

“Even Mircea, who was so long certain that my parents had finally decided to marry me to him, suddenly told me, "If we can't get married, then I shall want to see you three times in the future. Once when you have become a mother; the second time, when you are old; and a third, when you are on your deathbed.”
― Maitreyi Devi, It Does Not Die

“If anyone asks me now, how long he stayed with us, how many years, months or days, I won't be able to answer. In my fifty-eight years of life I have truly lived for six or seven years—the rest have been only repetitions. If among those, Mircea's stay with us was one year, then that was not just an addition of three hundred and sixtyfive days. They were not rotating on the axis of the earth, they remained steadfast at one point. Those moments with all their beauty remain fixed into my consciousness.”
― Maitreyi Devi, It Does Not Die

“Can one inflict so much suffering on oneself? Many people can. My Thakurma could. Her thirsty lips refused water even on her death bed because the nurse was of another caste.”
― Maitreyi Devi, It Does Not Die

“I am a prisoner. Who will free me? I thought.
Do not become a Hindu, Mircea. Hinduism will take you nowhere. Look at me, what have I gained by remaining a Hindu? It will not give you strength, it will take it away.”
― Maitreyi Devi, It Does Not Die

“I gave him a complete logical statement against animal sacrifice, and appealed that all the goats and buffaloes purchased for this purpose should be returned. He went on puffing, then without even looking at me said, "lt's all symbolic. We sacrifice all that is evil in us—and the animal reaches heaven when it is sacrificed before the Goddess."

I was a great arguer. I placed before him the arguments of atheists who told the Brahmins performing animal sacrifice at a Yajna, "If that animal goes straight to heaven because of the sacrifices, why don't you get your old father and sacrifice him, since that is probably the only way for him to reach heaven?”
― Maitreyi Devi, It Does Not Die

“I can feel his eager eyes following me, "Amrita, listen to me. Will you do one thing for me?"

"What?"

"Forget Rabi Thakur."

"The things you say, Mircea! Can one forget the sun?"

"The sun! How can a human being be compared to the sun?"

"When you learn Bengali—then you will also know whether a human being can be like the sun."

I tell myself—I shall one day surely show you the sun—and then both of us together will be sun-worshippers.”
― Maitreyi Devi, It Does Not Die

“What is he thinking? If he wants to read
Whitman to me, I will never agree. The other day he almost forced me to listen to three poems. They were not poems, but three pieces of log.”
― Maitreyi Devi, It Does Not Die

“For so long I did not know that through my whole life a tragedy was being written, slowly and steadily, in invisible ink, in an unspoken language and in an unheard voice.”
― Maitreyi Devi, It Does Not Die

“Uncovering his breast—
I would like to see if the heart still lives there.
This body so perishable
holds within it the wealth
of an immortal, undecaying entity,
which sings and marches
to an impossible tune.
I am still listening to its song
whom no weapon can pierce
nor fire burn.
I shall see him once again
beyond the sea of tears.”
― Maitreyi Devi, It Does Not Die

“The chirping of birds has some meaning in the
life of the world, but they do not know it, and it is not necessary that they should.”
― Maitreyi Devi, It Does Not Die

“Mulți dintre noi se lasă încovoiați sub apăsarea științei ce au dobândit și abia se mai mișcă, striviți ca animalele de corvoadă sub încărcătura din spinare.”
― Maitreyi Devi, It Does Not Die

“Viața nu se împlinește prin uitarea suferinței, ci prin zilnica transformare a mâhnirii în înțelegere, a cruzimii în tandrețe și a amărăciunii în dulceață.”
― Maitreyi Devi, It Does Not Die

“De ce nu ai spus adevărul, Mircea? Numai adevărul nu era de-ajuns? Ai scris pentru bani? Da, pentru asta ai facut-o - acesta este specificul Occidentului, unde cărțile se vând pentru voluptate, nu pentru dragoste.”
― Maitreyi Devi, It Does Not Die

“Omul nu este niciodată mulțumit cu tot ceea ce a primit în dar. El însuși este un creator, misiunea lui fiind aceea de a-și transforma necazul în fericire.”
― Maitreyi Devi, It Does Not Die