Preetam Chatterjee

“I am a Jew. Hath
not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with
the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject
to the same diseases, healed by the same means,
warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as
a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison
us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not
revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will
resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian,
what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian
wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by
Christian example? Why, revenge. The villany you
teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I
will better the instruction.”
― William Shakespeare

“Imperialism is the object-less disposition of a state to expansion by force without assigned limits... Modern Imperialism is one of the heirlooms of the absolute monarchical state. The "inner logic" of capitalism would have never evolved it. Its sources come from the policy of the princes and the customs of a pre-capitalist milieu. But even export monopoly is not imperialism and it would never have developed to imperialism in the hands of the pacific bourgeoisie. This happened only because the war machine, its social atmosphere, and the martial will were inherited and because a martially oriented class (i.e., the nobility) maintained itself in a ruling position with which of all the varied interests of the bourgeoisie the martial ones could ally themselves. This alliance keeps alive fighting instincts and ideas of domination. It led to social relations which perhaps ultimately are to be explained by relations of production but not by the productive relations of capitalism alone.”
―  Joseph A. Schumpeter, The Sociology of Imperialism (1918)

“There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.”
― W. Somerset Maugham

“যা পেয়েছি প্রথম দিনে সেই যেন পাই শেষে,
দু হাত দিয়ে বিশ্বেরে ছুঁই শিশুর মতো হেসে॥
যাবার বেলা সহজেরে
যাই যেন মোর প্রণাম সেরে,
সকল পন্থা যেথায় মেলে সেথা দাঁড়াই এসে॥
খুঁজতে যারে হয় না কোথাও চোখ যেন তায় দেখে,
সদাই যে রয় কাছে তারি পরশ যেন ঠেকে।
নিত্য যাহার থাকি কোলে
তারেই যেন যাই গো ব’লে—
এই জীবনে ধন্য হলেম তোমায় ভালোবেসে॥”
― পূজা / শেষ / রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর