Best 17 quotes of R. K. Narayan on MyQuotes

A profound unmitigated loneliness is the only truth of life.

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.

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.

No one ever accepts criticism so cheerfully. Neither the man who utters it nor the man who invites it really means it.

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.

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.

This is my child. I planted it. I saw it grow. I loved it. Don't cut it down.

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.

He(Samuel, known as 'the Pea') was as apprehensive, weak and nervous about things as Swaminathan was. The bond between them was laughter. They were able to see together the same absurdities and incongruities in things. The most trivial and unnoticeable thing to others would tickle them to death.

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

I returned from the village. The house seemed unbearably dull. But I bore it. "There is no escape from loneliness and separation...." I told myself often. "Wife, child, brothers, parents, friends.... We come together only to go apart again. It is one continuous movement. They move away from us as we move away from them. 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 and 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.

Sebutir benih yang bertunas di bawah kaki pohon induknya tetap berada di situ sampai ia dipindahkan..Setiap manusia, kalau sudah tiba saatnya, harus pergi dan mewujudkan potensi masing-masing dengan caranya sendiri. [Ramayana-Mahabharata, hal. 28]

Seorang perempuan yang sifatnya jahat tidak pantas diperlakukan sebagai seorang perempuan. [Ramayana Mahabharata, hal. 33]

Then there was Mani, the Mighty Good-For-Nothing. He towered above all the other boys of the class. He seldom brought any books to the class, and never bothered about homework. He came to the class, monopolized the last bench, ans slept bravely. No teacher ever tried to prod him.

The only trouble was that the scripture master, Mr. Ebenzar, was a fanatic.

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.

You know why I am here?" asked the headmaster. Swaminathan searched for an answer: the headmaster might be there to receive letters from boy's parents; he might be there to flay Ebenzars alive; he might be there to deliver six cuts with his cane every Monday at twelve o'clock. And above all why this question?