Tags Galore

Quotes From Here And There

Albert Einstein
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction.
Dylan Thomas
I fell in love – that is the only expression I can think of – at once, and am still at the mercy of words, though sometimes now, knowing a little of their behavior very well, I think I can influence them slightly and have even learned to beat them now and then, which they appear to enjoy.
Eddie Cantor
It takes twenty years to become an overnight success.
Edward Abbey
May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.
e e cummings
To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best night and day to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle any human being can fight and never stop fighting.
Eyler Coates
We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually produce a masterpiece. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Without music, life would be a mistake.
Gustave Flaubert
The one way of tolerating existence is to lose oneself in literature as in a perpetual orgy.
Going to the Opera is like making love; we get bored but we come back.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
If I love you, what business is it of yours?
John Steinbeck
Only through imitation do we develop toward originality.
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
There is no remedy so easy as books, which if they do not give cheerfulness, at least restore quiet to the most troubled mind.
Leonard Cohen
Ring the bells that still can ring;
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything;
That's how the light gets in.
Montaigne
The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.
Paul Sweeney
You know you've read a good book when you turn the last page and feel a little as if you have lost a friend.
Peter Altenberg
I never dreamed of being Shakespeare or Goethe, and I never expected to hold the great mirror of truth up before the world; I dreamed only of being a little pocket mirror, the sort that a woman can carry in her purse; one that reflects small blemishes, and some great beauties, when held close enough to the heart.
Robert Frost
In three words, I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.
There's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money.
Satchel Paige
Work like you don't need the money. Love like you've never been hurt. Dance like nobody's watching.
Thomas Mann
A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.
V S Naipaul
The writer has only to listen very carefully and with a clear heart to what people say to him, and ask the next question, and the next.

My Personal Library


Eight Weird Things About Me

In the memory of a blog that was updated quite regularly until a month back, I'm taking up the tag by Aloi which is nearly two months old. Thanks Aloi for some fodder for thought; I seem to be starved of it for quite some time now. Here are eight of the many weird things about me:-
  1. I do not like speaking unless it's absolutely necessary or enjoyable; I studiously hate small talk. The written word can claim so much more pith and consequence than speech that the latter seems almost mundane and unnecessary in comparison.
  2. I love walking. It helps me clear my head and think of solutions I might not be able to think of otherwise.
  3. I love Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata and can listen to it for hours on end. In fact, I almost never change to another song once I put it on.
  4. I am Indian and I do not understand cricket. Period.
  5. Whether in words or in colors, I do not like capturing things that are apparently and easily beautiful. I rather like to capture things in a way which reveals smaller beauties that are concealed beneath the surface of routine and are difficult to capture.
  6. I love good books. Someone once told me that reading a good book ten times is better than reading ten bad books; I would make the count hundred.
  7. I've a thing for Bengali language, literature and culture. I wish to travel the length and breadth of Bengal someday.
  8. I'm extremely non-judgmental. If I love something, I praise it heartily. If I don't like something, I pack up and move on. Different people want different things from life, and it is best not to try to stick to the rut of our opinions too much. My opinions are anyways not precious to me; I try to argue against them and refine them all the time.
In keeping with the good graces of some of my fellow bloggers, I do not wish to tag anyone in particular. If this tag strikes your fancy, please have a go at it. And please let me know so that I can read your version of eight random things about me and have a much needed laugh at your expense. ;-)

Done with that! Now for some (more) candid talk. When I started with this blog, it was an end in itself. But in thinking about it over the past few days, it has crossed my mind that this blog has gradually become incidental, the means to an end as of yet vague in description. It's purpose has changed to exploring other people's blogs and lives and basking in the awareness of how different lives can be even for people living in the same city, not to speak of the chasm that separates people on different continents. And yet there is a great universality to what we all seek and seek to express. And my quiet awareness of this universality seems to be growing as I lurk on blogs by people I do not know (which is what I've been doing all this while that this blog has remained forlorn), taking away pieces of a shared existence without letting the blogger even know about it.

Also I'm about to finish college in a week or so and conclude an education which unfortunately has not taught me anything. I hope that I can laugh at the useless wretchedness of it all after a few years. But then I know I will be able to.
 

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