Sanskrit, Tamil, Hindi and English. Every line with its meaning underneath.

Read it in the script it was written in, with a plain translation, what it means, and where it came from. More languages are on the way.

Get the app See what sits under a verse

Not out yet. It is being finished, and it goes on the App Store when it is.

The app open on an English quote, with what it means and a note on the play it comes from.

The app open on a Tamil verse from the Thirukkural, with its translation and what it means.

The app open on a Hindi couplet by Kabir, with its translation and what it means.

The app open on a Sanskrit verse from the Bhagavad Gita, with its translation and its words taken one at a time.

Each language has its own catalogue. Not one verse translated into the rest.

What it does

A small app on a very long shelf.

Quiet on the surface, and tens of thousands of verses underneath it. Three of them you will meet every day.

Nothing piles up

The app opens on one quote. Read more if you want more. Nothing counts what you have not read and nothing is waiting to be cleared.

The day's verse, with what it says and where it came from.

The note that explains it

Every quote arrives with what it says in English, what it is actually getting at, and the work it was taken from. Without that it is a nice sentence with a name under it.

Where you already look

Widgets for the Home Screen, the Lock Screen and StandBy, and one reminder at a time you choose. It goes where your eyes already go rather than asking for a visit.

On the Home Screen, the Lock Screen and StandBy.

The reason it was built

Under every verse.

Most apps of this kind hand you a sentence and a name and leave you to it. Every quote here arrives with more underneath. This is one real card, taken apart.

The verse

பகல்வெல்லும் கூகையைக் காக்கை இகல்வெல்லும் வேந்தர்க்கு வேண்டும் பொழுது.

How it sounds

pagalvellum kūgaiyaig kākkai igalvellum vēndharkku vēṇḍum poḻudhu.

What it says

By daylight a crow beats an owl. Anyone who wants to win needs the right hour as much as the strength.

What it is actually saying

The owl is the stronger bird and the crow still wins, because the fight has been moved into the wrong part of the day. Nothing about either bird changed.

Where it came from

Kural 481 is the first of the ten couplets in chapter 49, காலமறிதல், on knowing the right moment, in பொருட்பால், the book of Wealth and polity. The Thirukkural is 1,330 couplets in 133 chapters of exactly ten.

What it might ask of you today

The same fight is won or lost by the hour you pick.

Who wrote it

திருவள்ளுவர் திருக்குறள் 481

The whole card as it appears in the app, from the verse at the top to the source at the bottom.

Every day's quote is free to read in full, with its translation, its note and its source under it. Pro opens the card designs, the backgrounds a shared card can sit on, and the long shelf behind the day.

Languages

Every language has its own catalogue.

The Tamil, the Hindi and the Sanskrit are not translations of an English original. They are the verse as it was written, with the English alongside it.

தமிழ்

Tamil

The Thirukkural, and the Naladiyar beside it. Around them the Eighteen Lesser Texts, the didactic poems Tamil has been quoting for centuries. Every couplet in Tamil script, with the sound of it written out underneath, so it can be read aloud by somebody who cannot yet read the letters.

हिन्दी

Hindi

Kabir and Rahim, in the dohas they were written as. Two voices that a great many Hindi speakers can half-recite and have never seen explained, with a second line that finally says what the first one meant.

संस्कृत

Sanskrit

The Bhagavad Gita, complete at 701 verses. The subhashita collections, the verse morals of the Panchatantra, and lines out of the epics. Where a verse has been given the full treatment, it is taken apart word by word, with what each word is doing in the line.

English

Letters, essays, poems and speeches, all of them out of copyright. Each one carries the work it was taken from rather than a bare name, so a line you have seen on a poster arrives with the page it was written on.

An inkwell, a reed pen and an oil lamp on an old desk.

The verses themselves

A few of them.

No reviews to show you. The app is not out, and an invented one would be a lie told in the one place you are looking for honesty. Six real cards instead, with their real attributions, which have the advantage of being checkable.