Rabindranath Tagore

Men can only think. Women have a way of understanding without thinking. Woman was created out of Gods own fancy. Man, He had to hammer into shape.

The Lament Of The Old Nurse – Aeschylus

Our mistress bids me with all speed to call
Aegisthus to the strangers, that he come
And hear more clearly, as a man from man,
This newly brought report. Before her slaves,
Under set eyes of melancholy cast,
She hid her inner chuckle at the events
That have been brought to pass–too well for her,
But for this house and hearth most miserably,–
As in the tale the strangers clearly told.
He, when he hears and learns the story’s gist,
Will joy, I trow, in heart. Ah, wretched me!
How those old troubles, of all sorts made up,
Most hard to bear, in Atreus’s palace-halls
Have made my heart full heavy in my breast!
But never have I known a woe like this.
For other ills I bore full patiently,
But as for dear Orestes, my sweet charge,
Whom from his mother I received and nursed . . .
And then the shrill cries rousing me o’ nights,
And many and unprofitable toils
For me who bore them. For one needs must rear
The heedless infant like an animal,
(How can it else be?) as his humor serve
For while a child is yet in swaddling clothes,
It speaketh not, if either hunger comes,
Or passing thirst, or lower calls of need;
And children’s stomach works its own content.
And I, though I foresaw this, call to mind,
How I was cheated, washing swaddling clothes,
And nurse and laundress did the selfsame work.
I then with these my double handicrafts,
Brought up Orestes for his father dear;
And now, woe’s me! I learn that he is dead,
And go to fetch the man that mars this house;
And gladly will he hear these words of mine.

The Appointed Time – Aeschylus

Yet though a man gets many wounds in breast,
He diet not, unless the appointed time,
The limit of his life’s span, coincide;
Nor does the man who by the hearth at home
Sits still, escape the doom that Fate decrees.

Aeschylus

Justice shines in very smoky homes, and honors the righteous; but the gold-spangled mansions where the hands are unclean she leaves with eyes averted.

Aeschylus

Like a bad doctor who has fallen down sick you are cast down, and cannot find what sort of drugs would cure your ailment.

Maya Ko Dhisko – Abhi Subedi

धेरै बगेपछि
आँशु जस्तो पानी
सुकेर गए पनि
आकाशमा कटक्क माया लाग्ने
ढिस्को बनाएर जाँदो रहेछ ।

Nichorera Sukayeko Akash – Abhi Subedi

आकाशबाट
धर्धरी
भक्कानो फोरेर रोएको
कानमा खसेपछि
वेगले भेट्न दौडेँ,
पृथ्वी मेरो मोटरसाइकलको चक्कामा
पहिरन अल्झाएर
झन्डै नाङ्गिइन्,
पानी जस्तै थ्याच्च बसिन्
म भिजेको सरि
मायाले टाँगिएँ र
एक निचरेर सुकाएको हलुका आकाश भएँ ।

Jahan Bhamar Chha – Prakash Sayami

जहाँ भामर छ त्यही तिम्रो सिम्सार
तिमी विना चल्दैन मेरो पनि संसार

मन हो गीत कुन मसीले लेखूँ ?
सबै सपना कुन धागोले जोडूँ ?
तिम्रो हाँसो मेरो परिवर्तनको धार

नदेखेको सपना प्यारो भो सानु
नहिँडेको बाटो एक्लै कहाँ जानू
तिमी नै मेरो जीवनको आधार

जहाँ भामर छ त्यही तिम्रो सिम्सार
तिमी विना चल्दैन मेरो पनि संसार

Jaanda Jaandai – Prakash Sayami

जाँदाजाँदै आज फेरि मन उधारै रह्यो
ढोकैसम्म पुगेर पनि पाइला संघारै रह्यो

छिचोलेरै पुगेको’थेँ कति आँखा बाधा थिए
चाहनाथ्यौ तिमी मेरो सपना पनि आधा थिए
खोलुँ भन्थेँ मनको ढोका सबै अपुरै रह्यो
ढोकासम्म पुगेर पनि पाइला संघारै रह्यो

काँढामाथि टेक्नु पर्यो त्यो पनि त सहेकै’थेँ
दुनियाँ नै वैरी हुँदा तिम्रो आफ्नो भएकै’थेँ
कुन सिमाना कोर्यौ दैव ! बोली अधुरै रह्यो
ढोकैसम्म पुगेर पनि पाइला संघारै रह्यो

When Great Trees Fall – Maya Angelou

When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.

When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.

When great souls die,
the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
examines,
gnaws on kind words
unsaid,
promised walks
never taken.

Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed
and informed by their
radiance,
fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to the unutterable ignorance
of dark, cold
caves.

And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.

Maya Angelou

Stories of law violations are weighed on a different set of scales in the Black mind than in the white. Petty crimes embarrass the community and many people wistfully wonder why Negroes don’t rob more banks, embezzle more funds and employ graft in the unions…. This … appeals particularly to one who is unable to compete legally with his fellow citizens.”

Maya Angelou

Strictly speaking, one cannot legislate love, but what one can do is legislate fairness and justice. If legislation does not prohibit our living side by side, sooner or later your child will fall on the pavement and I’ll be the one to pick her up. Or one of my children will not be able to get into the house and you’ll have to say, “Stop here until your mom comes here.” Legislation affords us the chance to see if we might love each other.”

Maya Angelou

The white American man makes the white American woman maybe not superfluous but just a little kind of decoration. Not really important to turning around the wheels of the state. Well the black American woman has never been able to feel that way. No black American man at any time in our history in the United States has been able to feel that he didn’t need that black woman right against him, shoulder to shoulder—in that cotton field, on the auction block, in the ghetto, wherever.”

Friedrich Dürrenmatt

We are not cave dwellers anymore, we live in the age of technology. When someone needs a car, he does not need to build it. He can buy it. When someone needs a murder, he himself does not need to kill. He can order it.

Maya Angelou

I believe we are still so innocent. The species are still so innocent that a person who is apt to be murdered believes that the murderer, just before he puts the final wrench on his throat, will have enough compassion to give him one sweet cup of water.

Raymond Chandler

The boys with their feet on the desks know that the easiest murder case in the world to break is the one somebody tried to get very cute with; the one that really bothers them is the murder somebody only thought of two minutes before he pulled it off.

Lewis H. Lapham

Under the rules of a society that cannot distinguish between profit and profiteering, between money defined as necessity and money defined as luxury, murder is occasionally obligatory and always permissible.