Earth receives the seed and guards it,
  Trustfully it dies:
Then what teeming life rewards it,
  For self-sacrifice.
With green leaf and clustering blossom
  Clad, or golden fruit,
See it from earth’s cheerless bosom
  Ever sunward shoot.

But how is Mneme dreaded by the race,
Who scorn her warnings and despise her grace?
By her unveil'd each horrid crime appears,
Her awful hand a cup of wormwood bears.
Days, years mispent, O what a hell of woe!
Hers the worst tortures that our souls can know.

Today, we celebrate State Sports Day, in honour of an exceptional sportsman and Assam's first Arjuna Awardee, Shri Bhogeswar Baruah. He started off as a torch bearer of sports in Assam which has inspired many athletes over the years

No child should have to die for going to school, Nowhere should teachers fear to teach or children fear to learn. Together, we can change this picture. … And together let us follow the lead of this brave young girl, Malala. Let us put education first.

He was a hard shrewd jovial politician, whose acts of kindness served his interest and whose interest was himself. His type is panhuman. I had met him on Earth, and on Hain, and on Ollul. I expect to meet him in Hell.

Wouldst thou the young year’s blossoms, and the fruits of its decline,
And all by which the soul is charmed, enraptured, feasted, fed;
Wouldst thou the Earth and Heaven itself in one sole name combine?
I name thee, O Shakuntala! and all at once is said.

It was like beginning life anew without the vigor and enthusiasm of youth, like learning to become left-handed in old age.

We tell our young managers: 'Don't be afraid to make a mistake. But make sure you don't make the same mistake twice'.

R. K Narayan is delightfully conscious of the disappearance of the caste system.

The arms race is a race between nuclear weapons and ourselves.

Good friends we have had, oh good friends we've lost along the way
In this bright future you can't forget your past
So dry your tears I say
No woman, no cry
No woman, no cry
Little darlin' don't shed no tears
No woman, no cry

Sappho speaks words mingled truly with fire; through her song she communicates the heat of her heart.

Mahlangu follows a local tradition through which this particular type of painting technique is handed down in the family, communicated, learned and transmitted only by women (in the past)

Pope Pius XII was meant to go and castigate Hitler for being a [air quotes] "Genocidal Fuckhead … [air quotes again] with bunny rabbit ears". But he didn't, he wimped out, and for that history has renamed that Pope as "Pope Gutless Bastard I.

My poems come to me in images, like film. I can see it very clearly and then this overwhelming urge to write out best what I just saw comes over me…

Two years after launching The Huffington Post I was exhausted, burnt out. The feeling many of us have. I collapsed from exhaustion and on the way down I hit my head on the desk, broke my cheekbone and got four stitches on my right eye. And it started me on this journey of questioning what success is