am a refugee, too, forced to live far away from my own country. As my father says, we might be the world’s best-treated refugees, in a nice house with everything we need, but we still yearn for our homeland.
“Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes.”
― The Picture of Dorian Gray
― The Picture of Dorian Gray
“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”
― To Kill a Mockingbird
― To Kill a Mockingbird
“It is a sad thing to think of, but there is no doubt that genius lasts longer than beauty. That accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate ourselves. In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place. The thoroughly well-informed man--that is the modern ideal. And the mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-a-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value.”
― The Picture of Dorian Gray
― The Picture of Dorian Gray
“Because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of some one else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly -- that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to oneself. Of course they are charitable. They feed the hungry, and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion -- these are the two things that govern us.”
― The Picture of Dorian Gray and Other Stories
― The Picture of Dorian Gray and Other Stories
“And that's the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does too.”
― The Kite Runner
― The Kite Runner
Abhishek’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Abhishek’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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