My Reminiscences quotes

He takes in and leaves out according to his taste. He makes many a big thing small and small thing big. He has no compunction in putting into the background that which was to the fore, or bringing to the front that which was behind.

In short he is painting pictures, and not writing history.

Thus, over Life’s outward aspect passes the series of events, and within is being painted a set of pictures. The two correspond but are not one.

Thus, over Life’s outward aspect passes the series of events, and within is being painted a set of pictures.

The two correspond but are not one.

We do not get the leisure to view thoroughly this studio within us. Portions of it now and then catch our eye, but the greater part remains out of sight in the darkness. Why the ever-busy painter is painting; when he will have done;

There is no event in my reminiscences worthy of being preserved for all time. But the quality of the subject is not the only justification for a record.

What one has truly felt, if only it can be made sensible to others, is always of importance to one’s fellow men.

If pictures which have taken shape in memory can be brought out in words, they are worth a place in literature.

and I am reading “The rain patters, the leaf quivers,” for me the first poem of the Arch Poet. Whenever the joy of that day comes back to me, even now, I realise why rhyme is so needful in poetry.

Because of it the words come to an end, and yet end not; the utterance is over, but not its ring; and the ear and the mind can go on and on with their game of tossing the rhyme to each other.

Thus did the rain patter and the leaves quiver again and again, the livelong day in my consciousness.

At one of the sittings the pencil scrawled out the name of Kailash. He was asked as to the sort of life one led where he was. Not a bit of it, was the reply.

“Why should you get so cheap what I had to die to learn?”

This Kailash used to rattle off for my special delectation a doggerel ballad of his own composition. The hero was myself and there was a glowing anticipation of the arrival of a heroine.

I have no recollection of the name, features or disposition of this tutor of ours, but the impression of his weighty advice and weightier hand has not yet faded.

Never in my life have I heard a truer prophecy.

My crying drove me prematurely into the Oriental Seminary. What I learnt there I have no idea, but one of its methods of punishment I still bear in mind.

Our elders were in every way at a great distance from us, in their dress and food, living and doing, conversation and amusement. We caught glimpses of these, but they were beyond our reach.

Elders have become cheap to modern children; they are too readily accessible, and so are all objects of desire.

Nothing ever came so easily to us. Many a trivial thing was for us a rarity, and we lived mostly in the hope of attaining, when we were old enough, the things which the distant future held in trust for us.

Going out of the house was forbidden to us, in fact we had not even the freedom of all its parts. We perforce took our peeps at nature from behind the barriers.

Beyond my reach there was this limitless thing called the Outside, of which flashes and sounds and scents used momentarily to come and touch me through its interstices.

It seemed to want to play with me through the bars with so many gestures. But it was free and I was bound—there was no way of meeting. So the attraction was all the stronger.

It seemed to want to play with me through the bars with so many gestures. But it was free and I was bound—there was no way of meeting. So the attraction was all the stronger.

The chalk line has been wiped away today, but the confining ring is still there.

The distant is just as distant, the outside is still beyond me; and I am reminded of the poem I wrote when I was older:

This is the chief lesson which his infant state has to teach to man. There his possessions are few and trivial, yet he needs no more for his happiness.

The world of play is spoilt for the unfortunate youngster who is burdened with an unlimited quantity of playthings.

To call our inner garden a garden is to say a deal too much. Its properties consisted of a citron tree, a couple of plum trees of different varieties, and a row of coconut trees.

“Where then can it be? Don’t I know all the rooms of the house?” Who the king might be I never cared to inquire; where his palace is still remains undiscovered; this much was clear—the king’s palace was within our house.

Looking back on childhood’s days the thing that recurs most often is the mystery which used to fill both life and world.

Something undreamt of was lurking everywhere and the uppermost question every day was: when, Oh! when would we come across it? It was as if nature held something in her closed hands and was smilingly asking us: “What d’you think I have?”

Looking back on childhood’s days the thing that recurs most often is the mystery which used to fill both life and world. Something undreamt of was lurking everywhere and the uppermost question every day was: when, Oh! when would we come across it?

It was as if nature held something in her closed hands and was smilingly asking us: “What d’you think I have?”

What was impossible for her to have was the thing we had no idea of.

The thought that the seed might possibly grow into a tree kept me in a great state of fluttering wonder.

Custard apple seeds still have the habit of sprouting, but no longer to the accompaniment of that feeling of wonder. The fault is not in the custard apple but in the mind.

We had once stolen some rocks from an elder cousin’s rockery and started a little rockery of our own.

our backs bore as best they could the blows which befell them: and we accepted as one of the laws of the universe that it is for the Big to hurt and for the Small to be hurt.

It has taken me a long time to learn the opposite truth that it is the Big who suffer and the Small who cause suffering.

The quarry does not view virtue and vice from the standpoint of the hunter. That is why the alert bird, whose cry warns its fellows before the shot has sped, gets abused as vicious.

It has taken me a long time to learn the opposite truth that it is the Big who suffer and the Small who cause suffering.

The quarry does not view virtue and vice from the standpoint of the hunter.

That is why the alert bird, whose cry warns its fellows before the shot has sped, gets abused as vicious. We howled when we were beaten, which our chastisers did not consider good manners; it was in fact counted sedition against the servocracy.

My wooden pupils have since been replaced by cast-iron railings, nor have any of the new generation taken up their education in the same way—they could never have made the same impression.

I have since realised how much easier it is to acquire the manner than the matter.

Without an effort had I assimilated all the impatience, the short temper, the partiality and the injustice displayed by my teachers to the exclusion of the rest of their teaching.

With our personal prowess let loose thereafter, victory should by no means be out of reach. And, as the picture of this wonderfully simple strategy waxed vivid in my imagination, the victory of my side became assured beyond doubt.

While work had not yet come into my life I always found it easy to devise shortcuts to achievement; since I have been working I find that what is hard is hard indeed, and what is difficult remains difficult.

This, of course, is less comforting; but nowhere near so bad as the discomfort of trying to take shortcuts.

So when poor Poetry is mishandled, even now I feel as unhappy as I did about the thief. Many a time have I been moved to pity and yet been unable to restrain impatient hands itching for the assault.

Thieves have scarcely suffered so much, and from so many.

The first feeling of awe once overcome there was no holding me back. I managed to get hold of a blue-paper manuscript book by the favour of one of the officers of our estate.

With my own hands I ruled it with pencil lines, at not very regular intervals, and thereon I began to write verses in a large childish scrawl.

Like a young deer which butts here, there and everywhere with its newly sprouting horns, I made myself a nuisance with my budding poetry.

More so my elder brother, whose pride in my performance impelled him to hunt about the house for an audience.

It had doubtless duly impressed our officers. But curiously enough Nabagopal Babu did not succumb to it—on the contrary he smiled! He could not be an understanding man, I felt sure. I never read poetry to him again.

I have since added many years to my age but have not been able to improve upon my test of what does or does not constitute understanding in my hearer.

However Nabagopal Babu might smile, the word dwirepha, like a bee drunk with honey, stuck to its place, unmoved.

Our tutor would try to shame us by recounting the exploits of some other brilliant pupil of his. We felt duly ashamed, and also not well-disposed towards that other pupil, but this did not help to dispel the darkness which clung to that black volume.

Providence, out of pity for mankind, has instilled a soporific charm into all tedious things.

No sooner did our English lessons begin than our heads began to nod. Sprinkling water into our eyes, or taking a run round the verandahs, were palliatives which had no lasting effect.

Just such a village was right on the other side of our garden wall, but it was forbidden to us. We had come out, but not into freedom.

We had been in a cage, and were now on a perch, but the chain was still there.

One morning two of our elders went out for a stroll into the village. I could not restrain my eagerness any longer, and, slipping out unperceived, followed them for some distance.

the process of proving is such a nuisance to those who want to believe. Finally the number of seekers after poetic fame began to increase alarmingly; moreover their methods were not those which are recognised as roads to moral improvement.

Nowadays there is nothing strange in a youngster writing verses. The glamour of poesy is gone.

I remember how the few women who wrote poetry in those days were looked upon as miraculous creations of the Deity. If one hears today that some young lady does not write poems one feels sceptical.

This he would bear unflinchingly, with no attempt at retort. When at last the man’s incorrigible rudeness brought about his dismissal Srikantha Babu anxiously interceded for him.

“It was not he, it was the liquor,” he insisted.

He could not bear to see anyone sorrowing or even to hear of it. So when any one of the boys wanted to torment him they had only to read out passages from Vidyasagar’s Banishment of Sita;

The Meghnadvadha, also, was not a thing of joy to us. The tastiest titbit may not be relished when thrown at one’s head. To employ an epic to teach language is like using a sword to shave with—sad for the sword, bad for the chin.

A poem should be taught from the emotional standpoint; inveigling it into service as grammar-cum-dictionary is not calculated to propitiate the divine Saraswati.

All of a sudden our Normal School career came to an end; and thereby hangs a tale. One of our school teachers wanted to borrow a copy of my grandfather’s life by Mitra from our library.

Indeed I have learnt that value. It was because we were taught in our own language that our minds quickened.

Learning should as far as possible follow the process of eating.

When the taste begins from the first bite, the stomach is awakened to its function before it is loaded, so that its digestive juices get full play. Nothing like this happens, however, when the Bengali boy is taught in English.

The first bite bids fair to wrench loose both rows of teeth—like a veritable earthquake in the mouth! And by the time he discovers that the morsel is not of the genus stone, but a digestible bonbon, half his allotted span of life is over.

While one is choking and spluttering over the spelling and grammar, the inside remains starved, and when at length the taste is felt, the appetite has vanished.

If the whole mind does not work from the beginning its full powers remain undeveloped to the end. While all around was the cry for English teaching, my third brother was brave enough to keep us to our Bengali course.

and that, in the case of such, any touch of imperfection need cause no great alarm, for the speed of the flow is itself the best corrective.

When stagnation sets in then comes the danger.

So it is for the teacher, more than the pupil, to beware of wrongdoing.

and that, in the case of such, any touch of imperfection need cause no great alarm, for the speed of the flow is itself the best corrective. When stagnation sets in then comes the danger.

So it is for the teacher, more than the pupil, to beware of wrongdoing.

There was a separate refreshment room for Bengali boys for meeting their caste requirements. This was where we struck up a friendship with some of the others. They were all older than we. One of these will bear to be dilated upon.

How I felt or thought it is difficult to express clearly, but this much is certain that to be clear about the meaning of words is not the most important function of the human understanding.

The main object of teaching is not to explain meanings, but to knock at the door of the mind.

If any boy is asked to give an account of what is awakened in him at such knocking, he will probably say something very silly. For what happens within is much bigger than what he can express in words.

I was much better off when I had relied only upon my imagination to complete the verse.

Whoever goes back to his early childhood will agree that his greatest gains were not in proportion to the completeness of his understanding.

Our Kathakas I know this truth well. So their narratives always have a good proportion of ear-filling Sanskrit words and abstruse remarks not calculated to be fully understood by their simple hearers, but only to be suggestive.

But children, and those who are not over-educated, dwell in that primal paradise where men can come to know without fully comprehending each step. And only when that paradise is lost comes the evil day when everything needs must be understood.

The road which leads to knowledge, without going through the dreary process of understanding, that is the royal road.

If that be barred, though the world’s marketing may yet go on as usual, the open sea and the mountain top cease to be possible of access.

Why those tears came I knew not; and to a strict cross-questioner I would probably have given some explanation having nothing to do with the Gayatri.

The fact of the matter is that what is going on in the inner recesses of consciousness is not always known to the dweller on the surface.

Our Mahabharata and Ramayana gave us no clue to it. Nor had we then any children’s illustrated books to guide us in the way a child should go.

All the hard and fast laws which govern the world we learnt by knocking up against them.

Satya had told us that, unless one was very very expert, getting into a railway carriage was a terribly dangerous affair—the least slip, and it was all up.

I was never tired of roaming about among those miniature hills and dales in hopes of lighting on something never known before.

I was the Livingstone of this undiscovered land which looked as if seen through the wrong end of a telescope.

Everything there, the dwarf date palms, the scrubby wild plums and the stunted jambolans, was in keeping with the miniature mountain ranges, the little rivulet and the tiny fish I had discovered.

But I never could render him a proper account at the end of it. One day my balance was larger than the account warranted.

“I really must make you my cashier,” observed my father. “Money seems to have a way of growing in your hands!”

That watch of his I wound up with such indefatigable zeal that it had very soon to be sent to the watchmaker’s in Calcutta.

Why, oh why, had we to leave such spots behind, cried my thirsting heart, why could we not stay on there forever?

This is the great advantage of the first vision: the mind is not then aware that there are many more such to come.

When this comes to be known to that calculating organ it promptly tries to make a saving in its expenditure of attention. It is only when it believes something to be rare that the mind ceases to be miserly in assigning values.

So in the streets of Calcutta I sometimes imagine myself a foreigner, and only then do I discover how much is to be seen, which is lost so long as its full value in attention is not paid.

It is the hunger to really see which drives people to travel to strange places.

My father left his little cashbox in my charge. He had no reason to imagine that I was the fittest custodian of the considerable sums he kept in it for use on the way.

A passive acceptance by us of the correct and the proper did not satisfy him; he wanted us to love truth with our whole hearts; he knew that mere acquiescence without love is empty.

He also knew that truth, if strayed from, can be found again, but a forced or blind acceptance of it from the outside effectually bars the way in.

In my early youth I had conceived a fancy to journey along the Grand Trunk Road, right up to Peshawar, in a bullock cart. No one else supported the scheme, and doubtless there was much to be urged against it as a practical proposition.

He unhesitatingly gave me permission to correct this if I could. When I got the authority I found I lacked the power.

I was able to discover imperfections but could not create perfection!

Where were the men? Where was the strength in me to attract the right man? Had I the means to build in the place of what I might break?

He was not deterred by the danger of my making mistakes, he was not alarmed at the prospect of my encountering sorrow.

He held up a standard, not a disciplinary rod.

I would often talk to my father of home. Whenever I got a letter from anyone at home I hastened to show it to him.

In the days when the inner apartments were as yet far away from me, they were the elysium of my imagination.

The zenana, which from an outside view is a place of confinement, for me was the abode of all freedom.

Neither school nor Pandit were there; nor, it seemed to me, did anybody have to do what they did not want to. Its secluded leisure had something mysterious about it;

The little traveller was full of the story of his travels, and, with the strain of each repetition, the narrative got looser and looser till it utterly refused to fit into the facts.

Like everything else, alas, a story also gets stale and the glory of the teller suffers likewise; that is why he has to add fresh colouring every time to keep up its freshness.

After my return from the hills I was the principal speaker at my mother’s open air gatherings on the roof terrace in the evenings.

After my return from the hills I was the principal speaker at my mother’s open air gatherings on the roof terrace in the evenings.

The temptation to become famous in the eyes of one’s mother is as difficult to resist as such fame is easy to earn.

While I was at the Normal School, when I first came across the information in some reader that the Sun was hundreds and thousands of times as big as the Earth, I at once disclosed it to my mother.

The watery stuff into which literary nectar is now diluted for being served up to the young takes full account of their childishness, but none of them as growing human beings.

Children’s books should be such as can partly be understood by them and partly not.

In our childhood we read every available book from one end to the other; and both what we understood, and what we did not, went on working within us. That is how the world itself reacts on the child consciousness.

In our childhood we read every available book from one end to the other; and both what we understood, and what we did not, went on working within us. That is how the world itself reacts on the child consciousness.

The child makes its own what it understands, while that which is beyond leads it on a step forward.

When Dinabandhu Mitra’s satires came out I was not of an age for which they were suitable. A kinswoman of ours was reading a copy, but no entreaties of mine could induce her to lend it to me.

In any other country, where large political, social or commercial groups are being formed, such would as naturally become national leaders. The power of organising a large number of men into a corporate group depends on a special kind of genius.

Such genius in our country runs to waste, a waste, as pitiful, it seems to me, as that of pulling down a star from the firmament for use as a lucifer match.

I remember still better his younger brother, my cousin Gunendra. He likewise kept the house filled with his personality. His large, gracious heart embraced alike relatives, friends, guests and dependants.

I well remember how mystified I felt at this, for I had not thought of my feeling in that light. This prize that I got for not getting a prize did not do me good.

There is no harm in making gifts to children, but they should not be rewards.

It is not healthy for youngsters to be made self-conscious.

… could think of meant a cart, I had to drag in that cart in spite of there not being the vestige of a road by which it could reasonably arrive—the insistent claims of rhyme would not hear of any excuses mere reason had to offer.

The storm of laughter with which cousin Gunendra greeted it blew away the cart back over the same impossible path it had come by, and it has not been heard of since.

My eldest brother was then busy with his masterpiece “The Dream Journey,” his cushion seat placed in the south verandah, a low desk before him. Cousin Gunendra would come and sit there for a time every morning.

We still meet for business or political purposes, but never for the pleasure of simply meeting one another.

We have ceased to contrive opportunities to bring men together simply because we love our fellow-men.

I can imagine nothing more ugly than this social miserliness; and, when I look back on those whose ringing laughter, coming straight from their hearts, used to lighten for us the burden of household cares, they seem to have been visitors from some other world.

One of his longer poetic pieces was much appreciated when it appeared in the Bangadarsan, and I have heard his songs sung by many who knew nothing at all about their composer.

A genuine delight in literature is much rarer than erudition, and it was this enthusiastic enjoyment in Akshay Babu which used to awaken my own literary appreciation.

He was as liberal in his friendships as in his literary criticisms. Among strangers he was as a fish out of water, but among friends discrepancies in wisdom or age made no difference to him. With us boys he was a boy.

Those in authority are never tired of holding forth the possibility of the abuse of freedom as a reason for withholding it, but without that possibility freedom would not be really free.

And the only way of learning how to use properly a thing is through its misuse.

For myself, at least, I can truly say that what little mischief resulted from my freedom always led the way to the means of curing mischief.

I have never been able to make my own anything which they tried to compel me to swallow by getting hold of me, physically or mentally, by the ears.

Nothing but sorrow have I ever gained except when left freely to myself.

My brother Jyotirindra unreservedly let me go my own way to self-knowledge, and only since then could my nature prepare to put forth its thorns, it may be, but likewise its flowers.

But for such snapping of my shackles I might have become crippled for life.

Those in authority are never tired of holding forth the possibility of the abuse of freedom as a reason for withholding it, but without that possibility freedom would not be really free.

And the only way of learning how to use properly a thing is through its misuse. For myself, at least, I can truly say that what little mischief resulted from my freedom always led the way to the means of curing mischief.

My brother Jyotirindra unreservedly let me go my own way to self-knowledge, and only since then could my nature prepare to put forth its thorns, it may be, but likewise its flowers.

This experience of mine has led me to dread, not so much evil itself, as tyrannical attempts to create goodness.

Of punitive police, political or moral, I have a wholesome horror. The state of slavery which is thus brought on is the worst form of cancer to which humanity is subject.

I could see the triumphal pillar of argument, erected upon my nice distinctions, crumbling before my eyes at the merciless assaults of authoritative quotations; and the door effectually barred against my ever showing my face to the reading public again.

Alas, my critique, under what evil star wert thou born!

I spent day after day in the direst suspense. But, like Satya’s policeman, the B.A. failed to appear.

But there was nothing artificial about their sentiments. Any attempt to test Bhanu Singha’s poetry by its ring would have shown up the base metal.

It had none of the ravishing melody of our ancient pipes, but only the tinkle of a modern, foreign barrel organ.

Mere child as I was, I also was a member. We surrounded ourselves with such an atmosphere of pure frenzy that we always seemed to be soaring aloft on the wings of our enthusiasm.

Of bashfulness, diffidence or fear we had none, our main object being to bask in the heat of our own fervour.

Bravery may sometimes have its drawbacks; but it has always maintained a deep hold on the reverence of mankind. In the literature of all countries we find an unflagging endeavour to keep alive this reverence.

Another little defect was that these matches could not be got to burn unless there was a light handy to touch them up with.

If they could only have inherited some of the patriotic flame of which they were born they might have been marketable even today.

News came to us that some young student was trying to make a power loom. Off we went to see it.

“Made in our loom!” he shouted as with hands uplifted he executed a war-dance. The outside of Braja Babu’s head had then already begun to ripen into grey!

At last some worldly-wise people came and joined our society, made us taste of the fruit of knowledge, and broke up our little paradise.

When I first knew Rajnarain Babu, I was not old enough to appreciate his many-sidedness. In him were combined many opposites.

I was then just sixteen, but I was not left out of the editorial staff. A short time before, in all the insolence of my youthful vanity, I had written a criticism of the Meghanadabadha.

As acidity is characteristic of the unripe mango so is abuse of the immature critic.

When other powers are lacking, the power of pricking seems to be at its sharpest. I had thus sought immortality by leaving my scratches on that immortal epic. This impudent criticism was my first contribution to the Bharati.

When I blush to read these effusions of my boyhood I am also struck with the fear that very possibly in my later writings the same distortion, wrought by straining after effect, lurks in a less obvious form.

The loudness of my voice, I doubt not, often drowns the thing I would say; and some day or other Time will find me out.

The Kavikahini was the first work of mine to appear in book form. When I went with my second brother to Ahmedabad, some enthusiastic friend of mine took me by surprise by printing and publishing it and sending me a copy.

Writings of the age at which I began to contribute to the Bharati cannot possibly be fit for publication.

There is no better way of ensuring repentance at maturity than to rush into print too early.

But it has one redeeming feature: the irresistible impulse to see one’s writings in print exhausts itself during early life.

… to work wonders with the modest gifts at one’s disposal is bound to be an obsession in the beginning, so that the effort to transcend at every step one’s natural powers, and therewith the bounds of truth and beauty, is always visible in early writings.

To recover one’s normal self, to learn to respect one’s powers as they are, is a matter of time.

However that may be, I have left much of youthful folly to be ashamed of, besmirching the pages of the Bharati; and this shames me not for its literary defects alone but for its atrocious impudence, its extravagant excesses and its high-sounding artificiality.

We at once went out. It was bitingly cold, the sky filled with white moonlight, the earth covered with white snow. It was not the face of Nature familiar to me, but something quite different—like a dream.

Everything near seemed to have receded far away, leaving the still white figure of an ascetic steeped in deep meditation.

The sudden revelation, on the mere stepping outside a door, of such wonderful, such immense beauty had never before come upon me.

The lodgings selected faced the Regent Gardens. It was then the depth of winter. There was not a leaf on the row of trees in front which stood staring at the sky with their scraggy snow-covered branches—a sight which chilled my very bones.

For the newly arrived stranger there can hardly be a more cruel place than London in winter.

I knew no one near by, nor could I find my way about. The days of sitting alone at a window, gazing at the outside world, came back into my life. But the scene in this case was not attractive.

Though my Latin tutor had never ventured to trouble me with the proofs of his theory, yet up to this day I do not disbelieve it.

I am convinced that the minds of men are connected through some deep-lying continuous medium, and that a disturbance in one part is by it secretly communicated to others.

Mr. Palit next placed me in the house of a coach named Barker. He used to lodge and prepare students for their examinations. Except his mild little wife there was not a thing with any pretensions to attractiveness about this household.

behind, the shade of the fringe of pines lay spread like the slipped off garment of some languorous wood nymph. Enthroned on that seat of stone I wrote a poem “Magnatari” (the sunken boat).

I might have believed today that it was good, had I taken the precaution of sinking it then in the sea.

But such consolation is not open to me, for it happens to be existing in the body; and though banished from my published works, a writ might yet cause it to be produced.

I spent some months here. Then it was time for my brother to return home, and my father wrote to me to accompany him. I was delighted at the prospect.

The light of my country, the sky of my country, had been silently calling me.

When I said goodbye Mrs. Scott took me by the hand and wept. “Why did you come to us,” she said, “if you must go so soon?” That household no longer exists in London.

I was delighted at the prospect. The light of my country, the sky of my country, had been silently calling me. When I said goodbye Mrs. Scott took me by the hand and wept.

“Why did you come to us,” she said, “if you must go so soon?”

That household no longer exists in London. Some of the members of the Doctor’s family have departed to the other world, others are scattered in places unknown to me. But it will always live in my memory.

I cannot say that I have never been cheated while in England, but not in any way which it would be fair to hold in remembrance.

What grew chiefly upon me, rather, was the conviction that only those who are trustworthy know how to trust.

I was an unknown foreigner, and could have easily evaded payment with impunity, yet no London shopkeeper ever mistrusted me.

At the end, amidst much suppressed tittering, there would come a chorus of “Thank you very much!” “How interesting!” And in spite of its being winter I would perspire all over.

Who would have predicted at my birth or at his death what a severe blow to me would be the demise of this estimable Anglo-Indian!

Then, for a time, while I was living with Dr. Scott and attending lectures at the University College, I lost touch with the widow. She was in a suburban locality some distance away from London, and I frequently got letters from her inviting me there.

I had left home after breakfast at ten in the morning, and had had nothing since.

When abstinence is the only choice, an ascetic frame of mind comes easy.

I buttoned up my thick overcoat to the neck and seating myself under a platform lamp went on with my reading. The book I had with me was Spencer’s Data of Ethics, then recently published.

and, because they do not, they are ever apt to imitate something else. So, at this age of unmeaning activity, when my undeveloped powers, unaware of and unequal to their object, were jostling each other for an outlet, each sought to assert superiority through exaggeration.

When milk-teeth are trying to push their way through, they work the infant into a fever.

All this agitation finds no justification till the teeth are out and have begun assisting in the absorption of food. In the same way do our early passions torment the mind, like a malady, till they realise their true relationship with the outer world.

The lessons I learnt from my experiences at that stage are to be found in every moral textbook, but are not therefore to be despised.

That which keeps our appetites confined within us, and checks their free access to the outside, poisons our life.

Such is selfishness which refuses to give free play to our desires, and prevents them from reaching their real goal, and that is why it is always accompanied by festering untruths and extravagances.

In this wise did the excitement of the pursuit of English literature come to sway the heart of the youth of our time, and at mine the waves of this excitement kept beating from every side.

The first awakening is the time for the play of energy, not its repression.

And yet our case was so different from that of Europe. There the excitability and impatience of bondage was a reflection from its history into its literature. Its expression was consistent with its feeling.

these destructive forces having been brought in, temporarily, to rid it of accumulated thought-rubbish. In our country we received these in the letter, but never sought to make practical use of them, employing them only as a stimulant to incite ourselves to moral revolt.

Atheism was thus for us a mere intoxication.

For these reasons educated men then fell mainly into two classes. One class would be always thrusting themselves forward with unprovoked argumentation to cut to pieces all belief in God.

leaving out the god in whose worship they were indulging. This childishness our country has not yet succeeded in getting rid of. So even today, when we fail to see the truth of religion, we seek in its observance an artistic gratification.

So, also, much of our patriotism is not service of the motherland, but the luxury of bringing ourselves into a desirable attitude of mind toward the country.

In our country a correct and artistic exposition of the melody is the main object, thereon is concentrated all the effort. In Europe the voice is the object of culture, and with it they perform impossibilities.

In our country the virtuoso is satisfied if he has heard the song; in Europe, they go to hear the singer.

That is what I saw that day in Brighton. To me it was as good as a circus. But, admire the performance as I did, I could not appreciate the song.

Not that we wholly lack the same attempt in some forms of our music; but it is less pronounced, less successful.

Our melodies give voice to the star-spangled night, to the first reddening of dawn.

They speak of the sky-pervading sorrow which lowers in the darkness of clouds; the speechless deep intoxication of the forest-roaming spring.

I had not then actually heard the original tunes, but had sung these Irish Melodies to myself to the accompaniment of the harps in the pictures. I longed to hear the real tunes, to learn them, and sing them to Akshay Babu.

Some longings unfortunately do get fulfilled in this life, and die in the process.

When I went to England I did hear some of the Irish Melodies sung, and learnt them too, but that put an end to my keenness to learn more.

But the slate was clearly fitted for my mood of the moment.

“Fear not,” it seemed to say. “Write just what you please, one rub will wipe all away!”

As I wrote a poem or two, thus unfettered, I felt a great joy well up within me. “At last,” said my heart, “what I write is my own!” Let no one mistake this for an accession of pride.

Let no one mistake this for an accession of pride. Rather did I feel a pride in my former productions, as being all the tribute I had to pay them. But I refuse to call the realisation of self, self-sufficiency.

The joy of parents in their firstborn is not due to any pride in its appearance, but because it is their very own.

If it happens to be an extraordinary child they may also glory in that—but that is different.

Before, I would have held this to be a crime, but now I felt no compunction.

Freedom first breaks the law and then makes laws which brings it under true Self-rule.

The only listener I had for these erratic poems of mine was Akshay Babu. When he heard them for the first time he was as surprised as he was pleased, and with his approbation my road to freedom was widened.

The strength I gained by working, freed from the trammels of tradition, led me to discover that I had been searching in impossible places for that which I had within myself.

Nothing but want of self-confidence had stood in the way of my coming into my own.

I felt like rising from a dream of bondage to find myself unshackled. I cut extraordinary capers just to make sure I was free to move.

Neither their metre, nor language, nor thought had taken definite shape. Their only merit is that for the first time I had come to write what I really meant, just according to my pleasure.

What if those compositions have no value, that pleasure certainly had.

The song being great in its own wealth, why should it wait upon the words? Rather does it begin where mere words fail.

Its power lies in the region of the inexpressible; it tells us what the words cannot.

So the less a song is burdened with words the better. In the classic style of Hindustan the words are of no account and leave the melody to make its appeal in its own way.

I found this Baul to be saying the very same thing. The unknown bird sometimes surrenders itself within the bars of the cage to whisper tidings of the bondless unknown beyond. The heart would fain hold it near to itself forever, but cannot.

What but the melody of song can tell us of the goings and comings of the unknown bird?

That is why I am always reluctant to publish books of the words of songs, for therein the soul must needs be lacking.

But one thing I refuse to admit. Behind this charge of vagueness was the sting of the insinuation of its being a deliberate affectation—for the sake of effect.

The fortunate possessor of good eyesight is apt to sneer at the youth with glasses, as if he wears them for ornament.

While a reflection on the poor fellow’s infirmity may be permissible, it is too bad to charge him with pretending not to see.

There is a period in man’s life when his feelings are the pathos of the inexpressible, the anguish of vagueness. The poetry which attempts its expression cannot be called baseless—at worst it may be worthless; but it is not necessarily even that.

The sin is not in the thing expressed, but in the failure to express it.

There is a duality in man. Of the inner person, behind the outward current of thoughts, feelings and events, but little is known or recked; but for all that, he cannot be got rid of as a factor in life’s progress.

These Songs are the history of that struggle. As in all creation, so in poetry, there is the opposition of forces. If the divergence is too wide, or the unison too close, there is, it seems to me, no room for poetry.

Where the pain of discord strives to attain and express its resolution into harmony, there does poetry break forth into music, as breath through a flute.

When the Evening Songs first saw the light they were not hailed with any flourish of trumpets, but none the less they did not lack admirers. I have elsewhere told the story of how at the wedding of Mr.

As I would stand on the balcony, the gait, the figure, the features of each one of the passersby, whoever they might be, seemed to me all so extraordinarily wonderful, as they flowed past—waves on the sea of the universe.

From infancy I had seen only with my eyes, I now began to see with the whole of my consciousness.

I could not look upon the sight of two smiling youths, nonchalantly going their way, the arm of one on the other’s shoulder, as a matter of small moment;

Yet I saw them not as being apart by themselves, but as parts of that amazingly beautiful greater dance which goes on at this very moment throughout the world of men, in each of their homes, in their multifarious wants and activities.

Friend laughs with friend, the mother fondles her child, one cow sidles up to another and licks its body, and the immeasurability behind these comes direct to my mind with a shock which almost savours of pain.

When of this period I wrote:

When, after ascending the mountains, I looked around, I was at once aware I had lost my new vision. My sin must have been in imagining that I could get still more of truth from the outside.

However sky-piercing the king of mountains may be, he can have nothing in his gift for me; while He who is the Giver can vouchsafe a vision of the eternal universe in the dingiest of lanes, and in a moment of time.

I wandered about amongst the firs, I sat near the falls and bathed in their waters, I gazed at the grandeur of Kinchinjunga through a cloudless sky, but in what had seemed to me these likeliest of places, I found it not.

I had come to know it, but could see it no longer.

While I was admiring the gem the lid had suddenly closed, leaving me staring at the enclosing casket.

But, for all the attractiveness of its workmanship, there was no longer any danger of my mistaking it for merely an empty box.

But does one write poetry to explain any matter? What is felt within the heart tries to find outside shape as a poem. So when after listening to a poem anyone says he has not understood, I feel nonplussed.

If someone smells a flower and says he does not understand, the reply to him is: there is nothing to understand, it is only a scent.

If he persists, saying: that I know, but what does it all mean? Then one has either to change the subject, or make it more abstruse by saying that the scent is the shape which the universal joy takes in the flower.

If he persists, saying: that I know, but what does it all mean? Then one has either to change the subject, or make it more abstruse by saying that the scent is the shape which the universal joy takes in the flower.

That words have meanings is just the difficulty.

That is why the poet has to turn and twist them in metre and verse, so that the meaning may be held somewhat in check, and the feeling allowed a chance to express itself.

This utterance of feeling is not the statement of a fundamental truth, or a scientific fact, or a useful moral precept.

Like a tear or a smile it is but a picture of what is taking place within.

If Science or Philosophy may gain anything from it they are welcome, but that is not the reason of its being.

Like a tear or a smile it is but a picture of what is taking place within. If Science or Philosophy may gain anything from it they are welcome, but that is not the reason of its being.

If while crossing a ferry you can catch a fish you are a lucky man, but that does not make the ferry boat a fishing boat, nor should you abuse the ferryman if he does not make fishing his business.

“The Echo” was written so long ago that it has escaped attention and I am now no longer called upon to render an account of its meaning.

Even today we very often find the tools arrogating to themselves the lion’s share of the achievement, imagining the wielder to be a mere ornamental figurehead.

If the poor pen had a mind it would as certainly have bemoaned the unfairness of its getting all the stain and the writer all the glory!

It is curious that this extraordinary man should have got no recognition from his countrymen even after his death.

The little harbour, ringed round with hills, is so secluded that it has nothing of the aspect of a port about it.

Its crescent shaped beach throws out its arms to the shoreless open sea like the very image of an eager striving to embrace the infinite.

The edge of the broad sandy beach is fringed with a forest of casuarinas, broken at one end by the Kalanadi river which here flows into the sea after passing through a gorge flanked by rows of hills on either side.

Just as it does not do to have the writer entirely removed from the feeling to which he is giving expression, so also it does not conduce to the truest poetry to have him too close to it.

Memory is the brush which can best lay on the true poetic colour.

Nearness has too much of the compelling about it and the imagination is not sufficiently free unless it can get away from its influence.

Many a page at the outset of this Book, I am sure, is of no value. In the process of making a new beginning much in the way of superfluous preliminary has to be gone through.

Had these been leaves of trees they would have duly dropped off. Unfortunately, leaves of books continue to stick fast even when they are no longer wanted.

The feature of these poems was the closeness of attention devoted even to trifling things. Pictures and Songs seized every opportunity of giving value to these by colouring them with feelings straight from the heart.

Then he took up his quarters in a corner of my room and began to hold smoking parties with his friends, till I had to take refuge in flight from the smoke-laden air.

He gradually proved beyond doubt that his brain might have been diseased, but it certainly was not weak.

After this experience it took no end of proof before I could bring myself to put my trust in children of previous births. My reputation must have spread for I next received a letter from a daughter.

Thus one was the Byron of Bengal, another the Emerson and so forth. I began to be styled by some the Bengal Shelley.

This was insulting to Shelley and only likely to get me laughed at.

My recognised cognomen was the Lisping Poet. My attainments were few, my knowledge of life meagre, and both in my poetry and my prose the sentiment exceeded the substance.

From now I began constantly to meet Bankim Babu. He was then living in Bhabani Dutt’s street. I used to visit him frequently, it is true, but there was not much of conversation.

I was then of the age to listen, not to talk.

I fervently wished we could warm up into some discussion, but my diffidence got the better of my conversational powers. Some days Sanjib Babu would be there reclining on his bolster. The sight would gladden me, for he was a genial soul.

He delighted in talking and it was a delight to listen to his talk. Those who have read his prose writing must have noticed how gaily and airily it flows on like the sprightliest of conversation.

Very few have this gift of conversation, and fewer still the art of translating it into writing.

This was the time when Pandit Sashadhar rose into prominence. Of him I first heard from Bankim Babu. If I remember right Bankim Babu was also responsible for introducing him to the public.

And yet we should remember that all the loss and hardship due to his endeavours fell on him alone, while the gain of experience remained in reserve for the whole country.

It is these uncalculating, unbusinesslike spirits who keep the business-fields of the country flooded with their activities.

And, though the flood subsides as rapidly as it comes, it leaves behind fertilising silt to enrich the soil. When the time for reaping arrives no one thinks of these pioneers;

Then was formed a band of volunteers who, with flags and patriotic songs, marched the passengers in procession to the Indian line of steamers. So while there was no want of passengers to carry, every other kind of want began to multiply apace.

Arithmetic remained uninfluenced by patriotic fervour; and while enthusiasm flamed higher and higher to the tune of patriotic songs, three times three went on steadily making nine on the wrong side of the balance sheet.

One of the misfortunes which always pursues the unbusinesslike is that, while they are as easy to read as an open book, they never learn to read the character of others.

Arithmetic remained uninfluenced by patriotic fervour; and while enthusiasm flamed higher and higher to the tune of patriotic songs, three times three went on steadily making nine on the wrong side of the balance sheet.

One of the misfortunes which always pursues the unbusinesslike is that, while they are as easy to read as an open book, they never learn to read the character of others.

And since it takes them the whole of their lifetime and all their resources to find out this weakness of theirs, they never get the chance of profiting by experience.

She who was the youngest daughter-in-law of the house took charge of the motherless little ones. She herself saw to our food and clothing and all other wants, and kept us constantly near, so that we might not feel our loss too keenly.

One of the characteristics of the living is the power to heal the irreparable, to forget the irreplaceable.

And in early life this power is strongest, so that no blow penetrates too deeply, no scar is left permanently. Thus the first shadow of death which fell on us left no darkness behind; it departed as softly as it came, only a shadow.

One of the characteristics of the living is the power to heal the irreparable, to forget the irreplaceable. And in early life this power is strongest, so that no blow penetrates too deeply, no scar is left permanently.

Thus the first shadow of death which fell on us left no darkness behind; it departed as softly as it came, only a shadow.

When, in later life, I wandered about like a madcap, at the first coming of spring, with a handful of half-blown jessamines tied in a corner of my muslin scarf, and as I stroked my forehead with the soft, rounded, tapering buds, the touch of …

I would ever and anon return to take my stand there and gaze upon it, wondering what there was left in place of what had gone.

Emptiness is a thing man cannot bring himself to believe in; that which is not, is untrue; that which is untrue, is not.

So our efforts to find something, where we see nothing, are unceasing.

… as a young plant, surrounded by darkness, stretches itself, as it were on tiptoe, to find its way out into the light, so when death suddenly throws the darkness of negation round the soul it tries and tries to rise into the light of affirmation.

And what other sorrow is comparable to the state wherein darkness prevents the finding of a way out of the darkness?

And yet in the midst of this unbearable grief, flashes of joy seemed to sparkle in my mind, now and again, in a way which quite surprised me.

With the loosening of the attraction of the world, the beauty of nature took on for me a deeper meaning.

Death had given me the correct perspective from which to perceive the world in the fullness of its beauty, and as I saw the picture of the Universe against the background of Death I found it entrancing.

At this time I was attacked with a recrudescence of eccentricity in thought and behaviour. To be called upon to submit to the customs and fashions of the day, as if they were something soberly and genuinely real, made me want to laugh.

This phase had nothing to do with any ascetic feeling.

It was more like a holiday spree as the result of discovering the schoolmaster Life with his cane to be a myth, and thereby being able to shake myself free from the petty rules of his school.

If, on waking one fine morning we were to find gravitation reduced to only a fraction of itself, would we still demurely walk along the high road?

while the festivity which goes on in the shining light of autumn is in man himself. The play of cloud and sunshine is left in the background, while the murmurs of joy and sorrow occupy the mind.

It is our gaze which gives to the blue of the autumn sky its wistful tinge and human yearning which gives poignancy to the breath of its breezes.

My poems have now come to the doors of men. Here informal goings and comings are not allowed. There is door after door, chamber within chamber.

My poems have now come to the doors of men. Here informal goings and comings are not allowed. There is door after door, chamber within chamber.

How many times have we to return with only a glimpse of the light in the window, only the sound of the pipes from within the palace gates lingering in our ears.

Mind has to treat with mind, will to come to terms with will, through many tortuous obstructions, before giving and taking can come about.