The man that brings ant-infested faggots into his hut should not grumble when lizards begin to pay him a visit.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that individuals should not complain about the consequences of actions they initiated themselves.
Chinua Achebe's quote emphasizes the importance of personal responsibility and awareness of the repercussions that accompany our choices. By bringing trouble or undesirable elements into our lives, we must accept the challenges and issues that arise from our decisions, much like drawing pests to one's home and then being surprised by their presence.
In practice
A teacher might use this quote to illustrate the importance of accountability in a classroom discussion.
In fact, I thought that Christianity was very a good and a very valuable thing for us. But after a while, I began to feel that the story that I was told about this religion wasn't perhaps completely whole, that something was left out.
Writers don't give prescriptions. They give headaches!
Mr. Brown had thought of nothing but numbers. He should have known that the kingdom of God did not depend on large crowds. Our Lord Himself stressed the importance of fewness. Narrow is the way and few the number. To fill the Lord's holy temple with an idolatrous crowd clamoring for signs was a folly of everlasting consequence. Our Lord used the whip only once in His life - to drive the crowd away from His church.
It is the storyteller who makes us what we are, who creates history. The storyteller creates the memory that the survivors must have - otherwise their surviving would have no meaning.
Writing has always been a serious business for me. I felt it was a moral obligation. A major concern of the time was the absence of the African voice. Being part of that dialogue meant not only sitting at the table but effectively telling the African story from an African perspective - in full earshot of the world.
An angry man is always a stupid man.
Backlock, a poet blind from his birth, could describe visual objects with accuracy; Professor Sanderson, who was also blind, gave excellent lectures on color, and taught others the theory of ideas which they had and he had not. In the social sphere these gifted ones are mostly women; they can watch a world which they never saw, and estimate forces of which they have only heard. We call it intuition.
A mind too vigorous and active, serves only to consume the body to which it is joined.
Doubts are the messengers of the Living One to the honest. They are the first knock at our door of things that are not yet, but have to be, understood. . . . Doubts must precede every deeper assurance; for uncertainties are what we first see when we look into a region hitherto unknown, unexplored, unannexed.
For years I bore the crippling weight of anger, bitterness and resentment toward those who caused my suffering. Yet as I look back over a spiritual journey that has spanned more than three decades, I realize the same bombs that caused so much pain and suffering also brought me to a place of great healing. Those bombs led me to Jesus Christ.
One does not practice meditation to become a great meditator. We meditate to wake up and live, to become skilled at the art of living.
It's no use crying over spilt milk, because all of the forces of the universe were bent on spilling it.
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