Sarojini Naidu Quotes

Walter Scott has no business to write novels, especially good ones. It is not fair. He has fame and profit enough as a poet, and should not be taking the bread out of other people's mouths. I do not like him, and do not mean to like Waverley if I can help it, but fear I must.

African music, though very old, is always being rediscovered in the West.

Without effort and change, human life cannot remain good. It is not a finished Utopia that we ought to desire, but a world where imagination and hope are alive and active.

The Rose that Grew from Concrete (2000)

Success always obsoletes the very behavior that achieved it.

I'm not a political singer. I don't know what the word means. People think I consciously decided to tell the world what was happening in South Africa. No! I was singing about my life, and in South Africa we always sang about what was happening to us — especially the things that hurt us.

Oumou Sangare embodies this alluring dichotomy like no one else. She’s the epitome of tough femininity; beautiful, elegant, determined, independent, talented…and, well, hard

Things That Lose by Being Painted
Pinks, cherry blossoms, yellow roses. Men or women who are praised in romances as being beautiful.Things That Gain by Being Painted
Pines. Autumn fields. Mountain villages and paths. Cranes and deer. A very cold winter scene; an unspeakably hot summer scene. (p. 138)

There will always be some people who think for themselves, even among the self-appointed guardians of the great mass who, after having thrown off the yoke of immaturity themselves, will spread about them the spirit of a reasonable estimate of their own value and of the need for every man to think for himself.

That doesn’t happen to everybody, but it’s common in Cape Verde. That’s why in Cape Verde, women are always fighting for themselves and for their children

In a way, campaigning with The Hepatitis C Trust is business as usual. I've always felt that activism is my rent for living on this planet.

I've had a great time in South America and South Africa. Indeed it now seems that on this pair of wild hot continents I've enjoyed the most fruitful year of my life.

There's no escaping it-the world is full of lies. It is safest always to accept what one hears as if it were utterly commonplace and devoid of interest.

Those who try to make room for sex as mere casual enjoyment pay the penalty: they become shallow. At any rate the talk that reflects and commends this attitude is always shallow. They dishonour their own bodies; holding cheap what is naturally connected with the origination of human life.

Even three times a day to offer
Three hundred cooking pots of food
Does not match a portion of the merit
In one instant of love.

E-literature is certainly a broader concept than e-poetry, but it can also be limiting: like Verlaine in a famous line from his Art Poétique, one might conclude: et tout le reste est e-littérature, to emphasize the imponderable specificity of poetry.