"What greatness do I have that I have to tell anyone about? I live just like millions of people in this country; I am ordinary. My life is also ordinary. I am a poor school teacher suffering family travails. During my whole lifetime, I have been grinding away with the hope that I could become free of my sufferings. But I have not been able to free myself from suffering. What is so special about this life that needs to be told to anybody?"

“The greater the calamity, the tougher the fibre. It is tragedy that makes a man.”

“Does being a man make all things forgivable and being a woman all things unforgivable?”

“Premachnad was always man of the people, a man of the soil. He spoke for country’s poor, not just the poor of his native state.With his powerful pen, he painted picture after picture of rural India, its largely static societt, its caste clashes as well its communal harmony, its poverty and its exploitation, as well as richness of character of so many of its people.”

“Premchand’s stories have a mixed legacy. Seen from a contemporary view point it is easy to see his ideal of womanhood the basis for women’s continued subordination withing the patriarchal family.”

“The future belongs to the peasants and workers...India cannot remain unaffected by these winds of change...Who had suspected before the Resolution the tremendous might of the exploited peoples of Russia.”

“The most authentic and penetrating of Premchand’s portrayals center around village life. This was a life he knew intimately , since he had grown up in a village. Then as a teacher, and later an inspector of schools, he travelled extensively through the villages of eastern Uttar Pradesh.”