— Jane Eyre (1847)
About this quote
हिन्दी में
मुझे जीवन इतना छोटा जान पड़ता है कि उसे बैर पालने या दूसरों के किए अन्याय का हिसाब रखने में बिताया जाए।
What it means
Two separate activities are named, and the distinction is the whole sentence: nursing animosity means keeping it alive and fed, while registering wrongs means maintaining the record. The objection to both is cost, put as an arithmetic about time — life appears too short — and offered as one person’s calculation rather than as a commandment.
It circulates as a line about forgiveness, and it contains none. Nobody is absolved, no wrong is called smaller than it was, and the person who did the wrong is not even mentioned. The speaker has only decided where her remaining hours will not be spent, which is a far more modest claim than the one usually attached to it — and, because it needs no change of heart, a far more usable one.
What it teaches you
Split the register from the nursing, because you often need the first. Writing down what happened — the date, what was said — can be brief, cold and genuinely useful where a pattern matters. The hours go into the other activity, the rehearsing, so it is worth knowing which of the two you are doing the next time you reach for the memory.
अर्थ और सीख
हेलन कहती है कि जीवन इतना छोटा है कि उसे बैर पालने और अन्याय का हिसाब रखने में लगाना घाटे का सौदा है — यह क्षमा की बात नहीं, समय के ख़र्च का हिसाब है। वाक्य में न किसी को माफ़ किया जा रहा है, न अन्याय को छोटा कहा जा रहा है; बस यह तय किया जा रहा है कि बचे हुए घंटे कहाँ नहीं जाएँगे। सीख यह है कि घटना का ठंडा-सा रिकॉर्ड रखना अलग बात है और उसे मन में बार-बार दोहराते रहना अलग — घंटे दूसरी चीज़ में ख़र्च होते हैं।
Where it comes from
Helen Burns to Jane at Lowood School, arguing against the grudge Jane is nursing. Helen is dying of consumption while she says it, which Brontë does not let the reader forget.
It is the novel’s most quoted piece of consolation and also its most tested one — Jane spends the next four hundred pages discovering how hard it is to take.
