Kshitij Agarwal

“We need to free ourselves from the habit of seeing culture as encyclopedia knowledge, and men as mere receptacles to be stuffed full of empirical data and a mass of unconnected raw facts, which have to be filed in the brain as in the columns of a dictionary, enabling their owner to respond to the various stimuli from the outside world. This form of culture really is harmful, particularly for the proletariat. It serves only to create maladjusted people, people who believe they are superior to the rest of humanity because they have memorized a certain number of facts and dates and who rattle them off at every opportunity, so turning them almost into a barrier between themselves and others.”
― Antonio Gramsci, The Antonio Gramsci Reader: Selected Writings 1916-1935

“There comes a time for healing
no matter how broken you are right now;
no matter how heavy your heart is right now.
There comes a time when you will go outside
and let the sun shine on your face
and let the wind touch your hair
and you will not be tired by just simply being awake.
There comes a time when you will be happy to be alive again
and that day you will appreciate your own being
because now you know the other side.
Now you know the opposite.
Now you know what it’s like to not be sure if you really are; who
you really are;
if you simply are, anymore.
And that day
will be the beginning of everything.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, Empty Roads & Broken Bottles: in search for The Great Perhaps

“Beyond the bend in the road
There may be a well, and there may be a castle,
And there may be just more road.
I don’t know and don’t ask.
As long as I’m on the road that’s before the bend
I look only at the road before the bend,
Because the road before the bend is all I can see.
It would do me no good to look anywhere else
Or at what I can’t see.
Let’s pay attention only to where we are.
There’s only enough beauty in being here and not somewhere else.
If there are people beyond the bend in the road,
Let them worry about what’s beyond the bend in the road.
That, for them, is the road.
If we’re to arrive there, when we arrive there we’ll know.
For now we know only that we’re not there.
Here there’s just the road before the bend, and before the bend
There’s the road without any bend.”
― Fernando Pessoa, A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe: Selected Poems

“Never underestimate the power you have to take your life in a new direction.”
― Germany Kent