# Laxmi Prasad Devkota

Laxmi Prasad Devkota (Nepali: लक्ष्मीप्रसाद देवकोटा, 12 November 1909 – 14 September 1959) was a Nepali poet, playwright, and novelist. Honoured with the title of Maha Kavi (literal translation: 'Great Poet') in Nepali literature,and is known as the poet with the golden heart. Devkota is by and large regarded as the greatest poet in the history of Nepal and Nepali language. Some of his popular works include Muna Madan, "Sulochana",Kunjini, and Sakuntala.

## Quotes

* The thing which identifies is called eyes,understands is called brain, listens is called ear and feels is heart. To be devoid of these four things is the signs of being a beast.
** पण्डित लेखनाथ पौड्यालको विषयमा (On the subject of Pandit Lekhnath Paudyal)
* On the issue of depth, difficulty doesn't imply depth. Difficulty doesn't mean Art, incomprehensibility doesn't have any value.
** पण्डित लेखनाथ पौड्यालको विषयमा (On the subject of Pandit Lekhnath Paudyal)
* Among various games of man created to engage his mind, gambling is the most interesting and which comes the nearest to life's gain-loss, rise-fall.
** जूवा (Gambling)
* I enjoy gambling, I find ample opportunity in gambling to engage my mind and study.
** जूवा (Gambling)
* It is a cowardice to not move forward in opportunity. We cannot live in a life devoid of danger.
** जूवा (Gambling)
* That we usually call Education is making man stupid.
** शिक्षा (Education)
* Schools are industries to manufacture machines.
** शिक्षा (Education)
* In the fields of life there isn't any geometry. Here if whole is taken out from the whole then whole itself remains. Inside one is substance, inside atom is the world. Science cannot find everything and our psychological studies end within the darkness of intellect. This is why no teacher can teach.
** शिक्षा (Education)
* I cannot ridicule their every idea but in most things my vote is against the education system.
** शिक्षा (Education)
* The soul is desiring one thing, education is providing something else.
** शिक्षा (Education)
* The amount I have learned till B.A, I believe in three years time i can put inside little children's mind better, reciting stories...
** शिक्षा (Education)
* I call education that, which makes man a complete human, which teaches to utilize time...manufactures belief...
** शिक्षा (Education)
* I want to bow my head as if the all pervading God is scolding me. I know that i am a sinner.
** सुस्तरी श्वास फेर
* Truth shines through feelings..But in the heart there is the brightness of God. I assume feelings or emotions as primary, desiring and thinking come later.
** आमाको दिल
* Civilization has not yet started. We haven't learned to respect life. After our brotherhood feeling becomes rigid then only will real progress start.
** सुस्तरी श्वास फेर
* All dharmas hide inside the mother's heart. To receive is dhamra.
** आमाको दिल
* As long as we aspire to become great in this world or keep feelings to do things and show our pride, Bairagya is impossible.
** वैराग्य
* There is fun in being small; we can see other's importance dancing around. There is pleasure in the peacefulness of ego; we can see other's charade.
** वैराग्य
* I want to see what is there in the heart! Natural curiosity!
** साधुको माहात्म्य
* To doubt is better, because it helps understand, aids searching. Question is everything, answer is maturity.
** साधुको माहात्म्य
* What will we do with gold?" "It is better to eat nettles and satisfy our souls,"
** मुनामदन (Munamadan)
* A man's greatness is determined by his heart not by the caste and the lineage he brings.
** मुनामदन (Munamadan)

### पागल (The Lunatic)

* Oh yes, friend! I'm crazy- that's just the way I am.
** Lunatic. 1
* I see sounds, I hear sights, I taste smells, I touch not heaven but things from the underworld, things people do not believe exist, whose shapes the world does not suspect.
** Lunatic. 2
* You're clever, quick with words, your exact equations are right forever and ever. But in my arithmetic, take one from one- and there's still one left. You get along with five senses, I with a sixth. You have a brain, friend, I have a heart. A rose is just a rose to you- to me it's Helen and Padmini. You are forceful prose I liquid verse. When you freeze I melt, When you're clear I get muddled and then it works the other way around. Your world is solid, mine vapor, yours coarse, mine subtle. You think a stone reality; harsh cruelty is real for you. I try to catch a dream, the way you grasp the rounded truth of cold, sweet coin.
** Lunatic. 3
* I called the Navab's wine blood, the painted whore a corpse, and the king a pauper. I attacked Alexander with insults, and denounced the so-called great souls. The lowly I have raised on the bridge of praise to the seventh heaven. Your learned pandit is my great fool, your heaven my hell, your gold my iron, friend! Your piety my sin. Where you see yourself as brilliant I find you a dolt. Your rise, friend-my decline. That's the way our values are mixed up, friend! Your whole world is a hair to me. Oh yes, friend, I'm moonstruck through and through- moonstruck! That's just the way I am.
** Lunatic. 5
* I see the blind man as the people's guide, the ascetic in his cave a deserter; those who act in the theater of lies I see as dark buffoons. Those who fail I find successful, and progress only backsliding. am I squint-eyed, Or just crazy? Friend, I'm crazy. Look at the withered tongues of shameless leaders, The dance of the whores At breaking the backbone on the people's rights. When the sparrow-headed newsprint spreads its black lies In a web of falsehood
** Lunatic. 6

### Art and Life

* Art is the beautiful illustration of Truth from the creative imagination. The truth is in our life and unless it comes from the formlessness to the form we do not realize it.
** कला र जीवन (Art and Life)
* The chief element of creation is love and the chief action of love is Art.
** कला र जीवन (Art and Life)
* In the divine talent of the Creator the word got born and we, by studying this creation attain clear messages of Divine Conscience, Divine Truth, Divine Beauty and Divine knowledge. In the creative imagination of the God, completeness works and provides beautiful lines colors forms to the Truth of God. We realize the 'beautiful' through the sensing of Truth and where there is no Truth there isn't beauty. Keats has said that, 'Truth is beauty and beauty is Truth". This Self-Displaying form of God becomes such known in Artistic creativity that truth becoming beautiful descends to the outer forms of the senses.
** कला र जीवन (Art and Life)
* Even Truth is of many types, like – Imaginative Truth, Practical Truth and Philosophical Truth. That which is in three times, that is called Truth and God itself is the first and the last truth. But in practical life, truth takes many forms and as the practical truth I understand the sensible world's hard comprehensible truth. The one attained by the research of intellect, I call philosophical truth and imaginative that which illustrates through the subtle pictures of the mind. To say the stone is hard is practical truth, saying that adding up one and one the result will be two and through the existence of creation there is truth I call philosophical truth; and saying things like seeing Sarasvati talked with her, I understand as being the imaginative truth. For me, practicality is limited; philosophy, intellect is blind; I enjoy imaginative truth the most and through it find the glimpses of God
** कला र जीवन (Art and Life)
* I think human arts depend on the imaginative truths. The straight forward illustration of practicality cannot take the form of Art, not is photography any Art in my opinion.
** कला र जीवन (Art and Life)
* The works done by mathematical formulas, even though are the works of brain, do not deserve to be called Art. Painting is Art, Photography is not.
** कला र जीवन (Art and Life)
* When the creative imagination sees new dreams rising above from imitation and maneuvers its works in its own manner, there Art springs.
** कला र जीवन (Art and Life)
* The uprising of Art happens from the talents of the eternal conscience of man. The beasts don't have Art, neither do plants! But man, full of spiritual nature who can remember and know the information of World Artist, has been endowed with a energy to imitate a little of divine working.
** कला र जीवन (Art and Life)
* The energy to manufacture Art doesn't come merely from the superficial darshan (philosophy) of objects; nor from mere intellect and knowledge; but it comes from those subtle conscience, which finds emotional caressing from divine experience climbing above bestial eyes. The beast merely looks and remains satisfied, but man tries to touch the heart of everything. The superficial understandings do not satisfy him, in the world containing form-relation and conscience he cannot remain satisfied though philosophy. He tries to connect the things seen and experienced in his mind and outer nature with eternal and true and tries to touch them with the help of relation and support of chief reason.
** कला र जीवन (Art and Life)
* Science cannot satisfy his curiosity and Man searches for glimpses beyond the Sciences through the magic of emotional and imaginative world, where man feels self-satisfied as if he is near the truth.
** कला र जीवन (Art and Life)