AR

“The idea of you lynching anybody! It’s amusing. The idea of you thinking you had pluck enough to lynch a man! Because you’re brave enough to tar and feather poor friendless cast-out women that come along here, did that make you think you had grit enough to lay your hands on a man? Why, a man’s safe in the hands of ten thousand of your kind—as long as it’s day-time and you’re not behind him.

“Do I know you? I know you clear through. I was born and raised in the South, and I’ve lived in the North; so I know the average all around. The average man’s a coward. In the North he lets anybody walk over him that wants to, and goes home and prays for a humble spirit to bear it. In the South one man, all by himself, has stopped a stage full of men, in the day-time, and robbed the lot. Your newspapers call you a brave people so much that you think you are braver than any other people—whereas you’re just as brave, and no braver. Why don’t your juries hang murderers? Because they’re afraid the man’s friends will shoot them in the back, in the dark—and it’s just what they would do.

“So they always acquit; and then a man goes in the night, with a hundred masked cowards at his back, and lynches the rascal. Your mistake is, that you didn’t bring a man with you; that’s one mistake, and the other is that you didn’t come in the dark, and fetch your masks. You brought part of a man—Buck Harkness, there—and if you hadn’t had him to start you, you’d a taken it out in blowing.
“You didn’t want to come. The average man don’t like trouble and danger. You don’t like trouble and danger. But if only half a man—like Buck Harkness, there—shouts ‘Lynch him, lynch him!’ you’re afraid to back down—afraid you’ll be found out to be what you are—cowards—and so you raise a yell, and hang yourselves onto that half-a-man’s coat tail, and come raging up here, swearing what big things you’re going to do. The pitifulest thing out is a mob; that’s what an army is—a mob; they don’t fight with courage that’s born in them, but with courage that’s borrowed from their mass, and from their officers. But a mob without any man at the head of it, is beneath pitifulness. Now the thing for you to do, is to droop your tails and go home and crawl in a hole. If any real lynching’s going to be done, it will be done in the dark, Southern fashion; and when they come they’ll bring their masks, and fetch a man along. Now leave—and take your half-a-man with you...”
― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“এ এক আলাদা জীবন, যারা ঘরের দেওয়ালের মধ্যে আবদ্ধ থাকিতে ভালোবাসে না, সংসার করা যাদের রক্তে নাই, সেই সব বারমুখো, খাপছাড়া প্রকৃতির মানুষের পক্ষে এমন জীবনই তো কাম্য। কলিকাতা হইতে প্রথম আসিয়া এখানকার এই ভীষন নির্জনতা ও সম্পূর্ণ বন্য জীবনযাত্রা কি অসহ্য হইয়াছিল, কিন্তু এখন আমার মনে হয় এই ভাল, এই বর্বর রুক্ষ বন্য প্রকৃতি আমাকে তার স্বাধীনতা ও মুক্তির মন্ত্রে দীক্ষিত করিয়াছে, শহরের খাঁচার মধ্যে আর দাঁড়ে বসিয়া থাকিতে পারিব কি ? এই পথহীন প্রান্তরের শিলাখন্ড ও শাল পলাশের বনের মধ্য দিয়া এই রকম মুক্ত আকাশতলে পরিপূর্ণ জ্যোৎস্নায় হু- হু ঘোড়া ছুটাইয়া চলার আনন্দের সহিত আমি দুনিয়ার কোনো সম্পদ বিনিময় করিতে চাহি না।”
― Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, আরণ্যক

“The darker the night the brighter the stars. The deeper the grief the closer is God.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

“I shall write it in my diary to-night.’
‘What?’
‘That a burnt child loves the fire.’
‘I am not even singed. My wings are untouched.’
‘You use them for everything, except flight.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray