Naipaul India Quotes & Sayings

In India: A Wounded Civilization, Naipaul writes that 'the Indian way of experiencing' means that 'the outer world matters only in so far as it affects the inner'. — Ian Jack

Out of its squalor and human decay, its eruptions of butchery, India produced so many people of grace and beauty, ruled by elaborate courtesy. Producing too much life, it denied the value of life; yet it permitted a unique human development to so many. Nowhere were people so heightened, rounded and individualistic; nowhere did they offer themselves so fully and with such assurance. To know Indians was to take a delight in people as people; every encounter was an adventure. I did not want India to sink [out of my memory]; the mere thought was painful. — V.S. Naipaul

A part of being an actor is I people watch. I like to observe their behaviour, watch their reactions on the street and see how they talk to each other, and that's impossible when they are looking back at you. I used to enjoy taking the train and watching people in their own minds, struggling with themselves. — Javier Bardem

I wanted to make a living, but I really was not interested in money at all. I was interested in being a great comedian. — Larry David

You're a friend of Ev's and Lauren's. We talked. I tackled you. We rolled around on the floor together. It was a real bonding experience. — Kylie Scott

Well, India is a country of nonsense. M. K. Gandhi — V.S. Naipaul

I may not write new wisdoms nor new ideas.
I write things which are about to happen in the future,
things which might be lost from memories of mankind,
things which stored forever in recollections of all beings. — Toba Beta

I think when you see so many Hindu temples of the 10th century or earlier disfigured, defaced, you realise that something terrible happened. I feel the civilisation of that closed world was mortally wounded by those invasions the old world is destroyed. That has to be understood. Ancient Hindu India was destroyed. — V.S. Naipaul

Boldness will be at a disadvantage only in an encounter with deliberate caution, which may be considered bold in its own right, and is certainly just as powerful and effective; but such cases are rare. — Carl Von Clausewitz

In England I am not English, in India I am not Indian. I am chained to the 1,000 square miles that is Trinidad; but I will evade that fate yet. — V.S. Naipaul

In Trinidad, where as new arrivals we were a disadvantaged community, that excluding idea was a kind of protection; it enabled us - for the time being, and only for the time being - to live in our own way and according to our own rules, to live in our own fading India. — V.S. Naipaul

I'm a scientist, not a theologian. I don't know if there is a God or not. Religion requires certainty. Revere and respect Gaia. Have trust in Gaia. But not faith. — James Lovelock

For years and years, even during the time of my first visit in 1962, it has been said that Calcutta was dying, that its port was silting up, its antiquated industry declining, but Calcutta hadn't died. It hadn't done much, but it had gone on; and it had begun to appear that the prophecy has been excessive. Now it occurred to me that perhaps this was what happened when cities died. They don't die with a bang; they didn't die only when they were abandoned. Perhaps, they died like this: when everybody was suffering, when transport was so hard that working people gave up jobs they needed because the fear the suffering of the travel; When no one had clean water or air; No one could go walking. Perhaps city died when they lost amenities that cities provided, the visual excitement, the heightened sense of human possibility, and became simply places where there were too many people, and people suffered. — V.S. Naipaul

We made no inquiries about India or about the families people had left behind. When our ways of thinking had changed, and we wished to know, it was too late. I know nothing of the people on my father's side; I know only that some of them came from Nepal. — V.S. Naipaul

I went to India and met some people who had been involved in this guerrilla business, middle-class people who were rather vain and foolish. There was no revolutionary grandeur to it. Nothing. — V.S. Naipaul

Out of all its squalor and human decay, its eruptions of butchery, India produced so many people of grace and beauty, ruled by elaborate courtesy. Producing too much life, it denied the value of life; yet it permitted a unique human development to so many. Nowhere were people so heightened, rounded and individualistic; nowhere did they offer themselves so fully and with such assurance. To know Indians was to take a delight in people as people; every encounter was an adventure. I did not want India to sink; the mere thought was painful. — V.S. Naipaul

Two loves have made two different cities: self-love hath made a terrestrial city, which rises in contempt of God; and Divine Love hath made a celestial one, which rises in contempt of self. The former glories in itself - the latter in God. — Saint Augustine

The Devil danced all over the place in his beautiful eyes. You never knew what kind of surprise he had for you, just to make you laugh. — Dorothea Benton Frank

Independence was worked for by people more or less at the top; the freedom it brought has worked its way down. People everywhere have ideas now of who they are and what they owe themselves. The process quickened with the economic development that came after independence; what was hidden in 1962, or not easy to see, what perhaps was only in a state of becoming, has become clearer. The liberation of spirit that has come to India could not come as release alone. In India, with its layer below layer of distress and cruelty, it had to come as disturbance. It had to come as rage and revolt. India was now a country of a million little mutinies. — V.S. Naipaul

If I want to say no, I will, but for the right reasons. If I want to say yes, I will, but for the right reasons. Leave the consequences. Leave the finale. Leave the grand statements. The simplicity of feeling should not be taxed. I can't work out what this will cost or what either of us owe. The admission charge is never on the door, but you are open and I want to enter.
Let me in.
You do. — Jeanette Winterson

It was said in the old days that every year Thor made a circle around Middle-earth, beating back the enemies of order. Thor got older every year, and the circle occupied by gods and men grew smaller. The wisdom god, Woden, went out to the king of the trolls, got him in an armlock, and demanded to know of him how order might triumph over chaos.
"Give me your left eye," said the king of the trolls, "and I'll tell you."
Without hesitation, Woden gave up his left eye. "Now tell me."
The troll said, "The secret is, Watch with both eyes! — John Gardner

Give diligence if you would get assurance. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

In reality, serial killers are of average intelligence. — Pat Brown

To awaken to history was to cease to live instinctively. It was to begin to see oneself and one's group the way the outside world saw one; and it was to know a kind of rage. India was now full of this rage. There had been a general awakening. But everyone awakened first to his own group or community; every group thought itself unique in its awakening; and every group sought to separate its rage from the rage of other groups. — V.S. Naipaul

There's a natural set of constraints with mobile phones that force you to be a better photographer by acknowledging and observing the world around you. — Kevin Systrom

The oldest man he seemed that ever wore grey hairs. — William Wordsworth

Paradise seemed further away than India, but Hell had become a bit closer — V.S. Naipaul

Don't change your body to get respect from society. Instead let's change society to respect our bodies. — Golda Poretsky