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When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground.

Chinua Achebe

Literature, whether handed down by word or mouth or in print, gives us a second handle on reality.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Hands Literature Ourselves Reality
The world is like a Mask dancing. If you want to see it well, you do not stand in one place.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Dance Mask Place Stand World Yourself
Nobody can teach me who I am. You can describe parts of me, but who I am – and what I need – is something I have to find out myself.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Description Finding Myself Need Teaching
Whenever you see a toad jumping in broad daylight, then know that something is after its life.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Animal Frog Known Life See Yourself
If I hold her hand she says, ‘Don’t touch!’ If I hold her foot she says ‘Don’t touch!’ But when I hold her waist-beads she pretends not to know.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Foot Hands Hold Myself Pretend
If a child washed his hands, he could eat with kings.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Children Deep Eat Hands King Value Wash
When a tradition gathers enough strength to go on for centuries, you don’t just turn it off one day.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Enough Oneself Strength Tradition
Once you allow yourself to identify with the people in a story, then you might begin to see yourself in that story even if on the surface it’s far removed from your situation.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Beginning Identify People Removal Situation Story Yourself
A man of worth never gets up to unsay what he said yesterday.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Himself Man Worth
A disease that has never been seen before cannot be cured with every-day herbs.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Carry Cure Disease Hospital
When a coward sees a man he can beat he becomes hungry for a fight.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Competition Coward Fight Hungry Man See
Just think of the work you’ve set yourself to do, and do it as well as you can.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Thinking Work Yourself
The impatient idealist says: ‘Give me a place to stand and I shall move the earth.’ But such a place does not exist. We all have to stand on the earth itself and go with her at her pace.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Earth Existence Ideal Myself Place
I think not just Nigeria but I think the whole of Africa has to turn back to the rural areas and that’s where the majority of the citizens are and that’s where the engine of of development has to be found.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Development Finding Rural Thinking
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.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Fake Myself Religion Story Truth
We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own. The Igbo, always practical, put it concretely in their proverb Onye ji onye n’ani ji onwe ya: ‘He who will hold another down in the mud must stay in the mud to keep him down.’
CHINUA ACHEBE

Himself Humanity Moral Practical Stay Value

When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground.

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When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground.

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