People From Kolkata

"Bravery never goes out of fashion."

"It is to the middle class we must look for the safety of England."

"George, be a King!"

"Novels are sweets. All people with healthy literary appetites love them—almost all women;—a vast number of clever, hard-headed men."

"Titles are abolished; and the American Republic swarms with men claiming and bearing them."

"The thorn in the cushion of the editorial chair […,] it stings me now as I write."

"We who have lived before railways were made, belong to another world. […] It was only yesterday; but what a gulph between now and then? Then was the old world. Stage-coaches, more or less swift, riding-horses, pack-horses, highwaymen, knights in armour, Norman invaders, Roman legions, Druids, ancient Britons, painted blue, and so forth—all these belong to the old period. […] But your railroad starts the new era, and we of a certain age belong to the new time and the old one. […] We who lived before railways, and survive out of the ancient world, are like Father Noah and his family out of the Ark."

"Certain it is that scandal is good brisk talk, whereas praise of one's neighbour is by no means lively hearing. An acquaintance grilled, scored, devilled, and served with mustard and cayenne pepper, excites the appetite; whereas a slice of cold friend with currant jelly is but a sickly, unrelishing meat."

"At that comfortable tavern on Pontchartrain, we had a ' than which a better was never eaten at : and not the least headache in the morning, I give you my word: on the contrary, you only wake with a sweet refreshing thirst for claret and water."

"So they pass away: friends, kindred, the dearest-loved, grown people, aged, infants. As we go on the down-hill journey, the mile-stones are grave-stones, and on each more and more names are written; unless haply you live beyond man's common age, when friends have dropped off, and, tottering, and feeble, and unpitied, you reach the terminus alone."

"Those who are gone, you have. Those who departed loving you, love you still; and you love them always. They are not really gone, those dear hearts and true; they are only gone into the next room: and you will presently get up and follow them, and yonder door will close upon you, and you will no more be seen."

"The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar, familiar things new."

"He had many fine qualities, no guile or malice against any mortal; a big mass of a soul, but not strong in proportion; a beautiful vein of genius lay struggling about in him. Nobody in our day wrote, I should say, with such perfection of style. I predict of his books very much as you do. Poor Thackeray!—adieu! adieu!"

"Thackeray is everybody's past — is everybody's youth. Forgotten friends flit about the passages of dreamy colleges and unremembered clubs; we hear fragments of unfinished conversations, we see faces without names for an instant, fixed forever in some trivial grimace: we smell the strong smell of social cliques now quite incongruous to us; and there stir in all the little rooms at once the hundred ghosts of oneself."

"Thackeray's Philip, which I thought excellent, an exquisite combination of pathos and irony and genuine comedy. He is worlds beyond Dickens in the power of direct and accurate observation."

"(“Chip Delany says that science fiction is as much a way of "reading" as it is a way of writing, and learn that. What is it that we have to learn?”) That's true for realism, too. You have to learn how to read Jane Austen. We have to learn how to read realistic fiction. A lot of people never do. Some of them, our fantasy readers, don't know how to read Thackeray, or any novels. They don't know what to expect, they don't know what the rewards are supposed to be."

"Over and outside his fancy, which was the gift which made him so remarkable,—a certain feminine softness was the most remarkable trait about him. To give some immediate pleasure was the great delight of his life,—a sovereign to a schoolboy, gloves to a girl, a dinner to a man, a compliment to a woman. His charity was overflowing. His generosity excessive... Such is my idea of the man whom many call a cynic, but whom I regard as one of the most soft-hearted of human beings, sweet as Charity itself, who went about the world dropping pearls, doing good, and never wilfully inflicting a wound."

"Learn to recognise the mother in Evil, Terror, Sorrow, Denial, as well as in Sweetness and in Joy."

"After so much austerity I have known that the highest truth is this: He is present in every being! These are all in manifold forms of him. There is no other God to seek for! He alone is worshipping God, who serves all beings!"

"No one ever landed on English soil with more hatred in his heart for a race than I did for the English, and, on this platform, are present English friends who can bear witness to the fact, but the more I lived among them, saw how the machine is working, the English national life, mixed with them, found where the heart-beat of the nation was, the more I loved them. There is none among you here present, my brothers, who loves the English people more than I do. You have to see what is going on there, and you have to mix with them. As the philosophy, our national philosophy of the Vedanta, has summarised all misfortune, all misery from that one cause, ignorance, herein also we must understand that the difficulties that arise between us and the English people are mostly due to that ignorance; we do not know them, they do not know us."

"If I do an evil action, I must suffer for it; there is no power in this universe to stop or stay it."

"A perfect life is a contradiction in terms."

"To succeed, you must have tremendous perseverance, tremendous will. “I will drink the ocean”, says the persevering soul; “at my will mountains will crumble up”. Have that sort of energy, that sort of will; work hard, and you will reach the goal."

"“And may I ask you, Europeans, what country you have ever raised to better conditions? Wherever you have found weaker races, you have exterminated them by the roots, as it were. You have settled on their lands and they are gone forever. What is the history of your America, your Australia and New Zealand, your Pacific Islands and South Africa? Where are those aboriginal races there today? They are all exterminated, you have killed them outright, as if they were wild beasts. It is only where you have not the power to do so, and there only, that other nations are still alive.”"

"The highest truth is this: God is present in all beings. They are His multiple forms. There is no other God to seek. . . . It is a man-making religion that we want. . . . Give up these weakening mysticisms, and be strong. . . . For the next fifty years. ... let all other gods disappear from our minds. This is the only God that is awake, our own race, everywhere His hands, everywhere His feet, everywhere His ears; He covers everything. . . . The first of all worships is the worship of those all around us. ... He alone serves God who serves all other beings."

"You are such a big receptacle... I thought you were like a huge banyan-tree and would give shelter to thousands of weary souls."

"Vivekananda was a soul of puissance if ever there was one, a very lion among men, but the definite work he has left behind is quite incommensurate with our impression of his creative might and energy. We perceive his influence still working gigantically, we know not well how, we know not well where, in something that is not yet formed, something leonine, grand, intuitive, upheaving that has entered the soul of India and we say, "Behold, Vivekananda still lives in the soul of his Mother and in the souls of her children.""

"Come up, O lions, and shake off the delusion that you are sheep; you are souls immortal, spirits free, blest and eternal; ye are not matter, ye are not bodies; matter is your servant, not you the servant of matter."

"In every attempt there will be one set of men who will applaud, and another who will pick holes. Go on doing your own work, what need have you to reply to any party?"

"Great undertakings are always fraught with many obstacles. It is these obstacles which knock and shape great characters."

"What makes you weep, my friend? In you is all power. Summon up your all-powerful nature, O mighty one, and this whole universe will lie at your feet. It is the Self alone that predominates, and not matter."

"Have a kind word for all — it spoils work to show temper. Let people say whatever they like, stick to your own convictions, and rest assured, the world will be at your feet. They say, “Have faith in this fellow or that fellow”, but I say, “Have faith in yourself first”, that’s the way. Have faith in yourself — all power is in you — be conscious and bring it out. Say, “I can do everything.” “Even the poison of a snake is powerless if you can firmly deny it.” Beware! No saying “nay”, no negative thoughts! Say, “Yea, Yea,” “So’ham, So’ham” — “I am He! I am He!”"

"Worship of society and popular opinion is idolatry. The soul has no sex, no country, no place, no time."

"Work on with the intrepidity of a lion but at the same time with the tenderness of a flower."

"Work and worship are necessary to take away the veil, to lift off the bondage and illusion."

"Women will work out their destinies — much better, too, than men can ever do for them. All the mischief to women has come because men undertook to shape the destiny of women."

"Woman has suffered for eons, and that has given her infinite patience and infinite perseverance."

"Why are people so afraid? The answer is that they have made themselves helpless and dependent on others. We are so lazy, we do not want to do anything ourselves. We want a Personal God, a Savior or a Prophet to do everything for us."

"Who makes us ignorant? We ourselves. We put our hands over our eyes and weep that it is dark."

"Whenever we attain a higher vision, the lower vision disappears of itself."

"When we have become free, we need not go mad and throw up society and rush off to die in the forest or the cave; we shall remain where we were, only we shall understand the whole thing."

"When we have become free, we need not go mad and throw up society and rush off to die in the forest or the cave; we shall remain where we were but we shall understand the whole thing. The same phenomena will remain but with a new meaning."

"When we come to nonattachment, then we can understand the marvelous mystery of the universe: how it is intense activity and at the same time intense peace, how it is work every moment and rest every moment."

"What the world wants is character. The world is in need of those whose life is one burning love, selfless. That love will make every word tell like a thunderbolt."

"What do you gain in heaven? You become gods, drink nectar, and get rheumatism. There is less misery there than on earth, but also less truth."

"We want to know in order to make ourselves free. That is our life: one universal cry for freedom."

"We reap what we sow. We are the makers of our own fate. None else has the blame, none has the praise."

"We must have friendship for all; we must be merciful toward those that are in misery; when people are happy, we ought to be happy; and to the wicked we must be indifferent. These attitudes will make the mind peaceful."

"We must be bright and cheerful. Long faces do not make religion. Religion should be the most joyful thing in the world, because it is the best."

"We must approach religion with reverence and with love, and our heart will stand up and say, this is truth, and this is untruth."