Easily Available Is Not Valued

People do not notice nor give value to those things that are always available or always around them all the time — air to breathe, solid ground beneath their feet, the local culture, being alive, the support of a loved one — until those things are taken away from them, or seriously threatened to be taken away from them. It is paradoxical: anything that is omnipresent tends to escape our notice. Consequently, we fail to appreciate it.

People who had looked at Death face-to-face — for example, people who survived a life-threatening illness, or an accident that was fatal for many companions, or any event where they thought they would die — are people who afterwards better saw how precious Life is and who thereafter lived Life more fully. Like young children, they listened, experienced and savored life more intensely. I know, because I survived an illness that threatened my life for nearly four years.
Take your local or national culture. You grew up within it. It is around you all the time. You never even knew what it consists of — until you leave your town or your country and travel to another culture. It is when you are outside your culture and you are confronted with an alien, strange or different culture that you begin to be aware of your own culture!

- From a blog

What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly.

- Thomas Paine, 'The American Crisis'

...यह इंसानी फितरत है कि जिस चीज को वह पा लेता है उसकी अहमियत खत्म हो जाती है। 

- उषा चौधरी की कहानी 'प्रवासी पाखी' से ('सहारा समय', 21 जनवरी, 2006)

We never know the worth of water till the well is dry.

- Thomas Fuller

दुनिया जिसे कहते हैं जादू का ख़िलौना है

मिल जाये तो मिट्टी हैं खो जाये तो सोना है

- निदा फ़ाज़ली

You Were My Crush... Till You Said You Love Me.

- Title of a book