Top 10 Most Famous R. K. Narayan Quotes (BEST)
“The difference between a simpleton and an intelligent man, according to the man who is convinced that he is of the latter category, is that the former wholeheartedly accepts all things that he sees and hears while the latter never admits anything except after a most searching scrutiny. He imagines his intelligence to be a sieve of closely woven mesh through which nothing but the finest can pass.”
R. K. Narayan
“In a world where we are accustomed to rivalries over possession, authority, and borders, and people clashing over the issue, ‘Ours,’ or ‘Mine, not yours,’ it is rather strange to find two people debating whose the kingdom is not, and asserting: ‘Yours, not mine.’.”
R. K. Narayan
15 Thought-Provoking R. K. Narayan Quotes
“We are a flawed, weak species, he gently reminds us in these pages, focusing his attention, clearly and without sentiment, on those who will stoop low, those who will stop at nothing. What makes us care for such frequently pathetic characters is that they, like most of the rest of us, are strivers, driven by hopes for a slightly better life.”
R. K. Narayan
“This education has reduced us to a nation of morons; we were strangers to our own culture and camp followers of another culture, feeding on leavings and garbage. What about our own roots? I am up against the system, the whole method and approach of a system of education which makes us morons, cultural morons, but efficient clerks for all your business and administration offices.”
R. K. Narayan
“The sun set beyond the sea, so says the poet – and when a poet mentions a sea, we have to accept it no harm in letting a poet describe his vision, no need to question his geography.”
R. K. Narayan
“There are no more surprises and shocks in life, so that I watch the flame without agitation. For me the greatest reality is this and nothing else. Nothing else will worry or interest me in life hereafter.”
R. K. Narayan
10 Wise R. K. Narayan Quotes
“If someone should ask, “how should an Opposition function?” the best answer would be, “in the manner of a traditional mother-in-law who watches the performance of household work by a daughter-in-law and follows her about with her comments.”
R. K. Narayan
“We come together only to go apart again. The law of life can’t be avoided. The law comes into operation the moment we detach ourselves from our mother’s womb. All struggle & misery in life is due to our attempt to arrest this law or get away from it or in allowing ourselves to be hurt by it. The fact must be recognized. A profound unmitigated loneliness is the only truth of life. All else is false. The law of life. No sense in battling against it.”
R. K. Narayan
“Those who believe in destiny and those who drift without such beliefs are alike the worst among men; only those who act and perform what is right for their station in life are worthy of praise.”
R. K. Narayan
3 R. K. Narayan Quotes About Love and Friendship
“Friendship was another illusion like love, though it did not reach the same mad heights. People pretended that they were friends, when the fact was they were brought together by force of circumstances.”
R. K. Narayan
“He then explained his new philosophy, which followed the devastating discovery that Love and Friendship were the veriest illusions. He explained that people married because their sexual appetite had to be satisfied and there must be somebody to manage the house. There was nothing deeper than that in any man and woman relationship.”
R. K. Narayan
3 R. K. Narayan Quotes About Travel
“A man who preferred to dress like a permanent tourist was just what a guide passionately looked for all his life. You may want to ask why I became a guide or when. I was a guide for the same reason as someone else is a signaler, porter, or guard. It is fated thus. Don’t laugh at my railway associations. The railways got into my blood very early in life. Engines with their tremendous clanging.”
R. K. Narayan
“In a few months I was a seasoned guide. I had viewed myself as an amateur guide and a professional shopman, but now gradually I began to think of myself as a part-time shop-keeper and a full-time tourist guide.”
R.K. Narayan
12 R. K. Narayan Quotes That Will Make You Think
“The faint aroma of gum and calico that hangs about a library is as the fragrance of incense to me. I think the most beautiful sight is the gilt-edged backs of a row of books on a shelf. The alley between two well-stocked shelves in a hall fills me with the same delight as passing through a silent avenue of trees. The colour of a binding-cloth and its smooth texture gives me the same pleasure as touching a flower on its stalk. A good library hall has an atmosphere which elates. I have seen one or two University Libraries that have the same atmosphere as a chapel, with large windows, great trees outside, and glass doors sliding on noiseless hinges.”
R. K. Narayan
“It was Monday morning. Swaminathan was reluctant to open his eyes. he considered Monday specially unpleasant in the calendar. After the delicious freedom of Saturday and Sunday, it was difficult to get into the Monday mood of work and discipline. He shuddered at the very thought of school: the dismal yellow building; the fire-eyed Vedanayagam, his class teacher, and headmaster with his thin long cane.”
R. K. Narayan
“But it was like hiding a corpse. I’ve come to the conclusion that nothing in this world can be hidden or suppressed. All such attempts are like holding an umbrella to conceal the sun.”
R. K. Narayan
“I came in several times and spoke, but perhaps you were asleep when I thought you were awake.’ ‘You are very considerate to explain it this way,’ Sugreeva said, ‘but I was drunk’.”
R. K. Narayan
“Rama glanced at her whenever a beautiful object caught his eye. Every tint of the sky, every shape of a flower or bud, every elegant form of a creeper reminded him of some aspect or other of Sita’s person.”
R. K. Narayan
“The next three days I was very busy. My table was placed in the front room of the new house. All my papers and books were arranged neatly. My clothes hung on a peg. The rest of the house was swept and cleaned.”
R. K. Narayan
“By the twelfth day of his fast, Raju himself has become a tourist attraction. Before an enormous crowd and an American television crew, the starving man is helped down to the drought-stricken river to pray.”
R. K. Narayan
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