c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Now let us look to the ancient inhabitants of India. With them, first of all, religion was not only one interest by the side of many. It was the all-absorbing interest; it embraced not only worship and prayer, but what we call philosophy, morality, law, and government, —all was pervaded by religion. Their whole life was to them a religion—everything else was, as it were, a mere concession made to the ephemeral requirements of this life.
— Friedrich Max Müller, India: What it Can Teach Us
Why should anyone, in the name of caste, be considered lowly or be made to do a mean job?. If all in the country are given education, can there exist a caste for doing mean work? It is not because of lack of education that those people are constrained to do contemptible work and are considered lowly?
— Periyar E.V. Ramasamy
Religion is trust, and that trust arose in the beginning from the impressions made on the mind and heart of man by the order and wisdom of nature, and more particularly, by those regularly recurring events, the return of the sun, the revival of the moon, the order of the seasons, the law of cause and effect, gradually discovered in all things, and traced back in the end to a cause of all causes, by whatever name we choose to call it.
— Friedrich Max Müller, India: What it Can Teach Us
We can increase our power by knowledge only. When lines of people outside temples will be seen outside libraries
—  then only India can become most powerful country in the world.
But, for all that, there is a Beyond, and he who has once caught a glance of it, is like a man who has gazed at the sun —wherever he looks, everywhere he sees the image of the sun. Speak to him of finite things, and he will tell you that the Finite is impossible and meaningless without the Infinite. Speak to him of death, and he will call it birth ; speak to him of time, and he will call it the mere shadow of eternity. To us the senses seem to be the organs, the tools, the most powerful engines of knowledge ; to him they are, if not actually deceivers, at all events heavy fetters, checking the flight of the spirit. To us this earth, this life, all that we see, and hear, and touch is certain. Here, we feel, is our home, here lie our duties, here our pleasures. To him this earth is a thing that once was not, and that again will cease to be ; this life is a short dream from which we shall soon awake. Of nothing he professes greater ignorance than of what to others seems to be most certain, namely what we see, and hear, and touch ; and as to our home, wherever that may be, he knows that certainly it is not here.
— Friedrich Max Müller, India: What it Can Teach Us
His youth carried his words and lit the room with an optimism. “India is like our home,” he said, “our spiritual home. Even before we get here there was that feeling.
— Richard Payment, For Want of Wonders
That particular fear has the texture you can neither forget nor describe. It is like the fear of the victims of an earthquake, of people who have lost faith in the stillness of the earth. And yet it is not the same. It is without analogy for it is not comparable to the fear of nature, which is the most universal of human fears, nor to the fear of violence of the state, which is the commonest of modern fears. It is the fear that comes from the knowledge that normalcy is utterly contingent, that spaces that surround one, the streets that one inhabits, can become, suddenly and without warning, as hostile as a desert in a flash flood. It is this that sets apart the thousand million people who inhabit the subcontinent from the rest of the world - not language, not food, not music - it is the special quality of loneliness that grows out of the fear of the war between oneself and one's image in the mirror.
— Amitav Ghosh
The lounge of the private terminal in Delhi. A place of beige leather sofas and cappuccinos, set deep in that world where a seeling modernity has yet to close over the land, and where in the empty spaces that lie between the elevated roads and the coloured glass buildings there are still, like insects taking shelter under the veined roof of a leaf, the encampments of families who built them. Black pigs still thread their way through the weeds, there are still patient lorry-loads of labourers, waiting among the dazzle of the new cars, for the lights to change. One India, dwarfed and stunted, adheres like a watchful undergrowth to another India which, in very physical ways, as with the roads that fly up out of the pale land, or the chunks of monorail that rise up from the ground like the remnants of an ancient wall, or the blank closed faces of the glass buildings, wishes to shrug off its poorer opposite: to leave it behind; to shut it out; to soar over it. One man, above all, captures the mood of this time: the security guard. In him, this man of expectation – a man not rich himself, but standing guard at the doorway to a world of riches – it is possible to feel the boredom and restlessness of a world that inspires ambition, but cannot answer it. Skanda watches him watching the lounge, with eyes glazed and yellowing from undernourishment. A favourite phrase from college returns: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
— Aatish Taseer, The Way Things Were
On the wall of Amshad's office there was a poster that made me laugh: DO NOT GIVE ME A BANGLE, GIVE ME A PEN. Well-meaning charities often train illiterate slum women to make cheap trinkets.
— Edward Luce
One of the reasons for this cataclysmic change of destinies was the inherent weakness of a decaying agricultural empire of the Mughals which after more than two hundred years of rule over vast areas of India, was at its terminal stage and needed a small push to crumble like a house of cards.That push was given by six East India Companies of different European countries which had extracted rights to trade with India from the Mughals but transformed themselves as the arbiters and protectors of several Indian states. In this process they not only became rich but also militarily strong because in the twilight years of the Mughal empire, deteriorating security environment necessitated to arm themselves to protect their economic interests. Because of their inherent superiority as representatives of rising industrial powers, they had access to modern techniques and technology of warfare, which turned out to be the decisive factor in capturing vast territories in India.
— Shahid Hussain Raja, 1857 Indian War of Independence:1857 Indian Sepoys' Mutiny
Amid the echoes of the roar of the guns in Flanders, the world is inclined to overlook India's share in it all and the stout proud loyalty of Indian hearts. May this tribute to the gallant Indian gentlemen who came to fight our battles serve to remind its readers that they who give their best, and they who take, are one.
— Talbot Mundy, Hira Singh
Why do we want to know history? Why does history form a recognized part of our liberal education? Simply because all of us, and every one of us, ought to know how we have come to be what we are, so that each generation need not start again from the same point, and toil over the same ground, but, profiting by the experience of those who came before, may advance towards higher points and nobler aims.
— Friedrich Max Müller, India: What it Can Teach Us
Bhagat Singh revered Lajpat Rai as a leader. But he would not spare even Lajpat Rai, when, during the last years of his life, Lajpat Rai turned to communal politics. He then launched a political-ideological campaign against him. Because Lajpat Rai was a respected leader, he would not publicly use harsh words of criticism against him. And so he printed as a pamphlet Robert Browning’s famous poem, ‘The Lost Leader,’ in which Browning criticizes Wordsworth for turning against liberty. The poem begins with the line ‘Just for a handful of silver he left us.’ A few more of the poem’s lines were: ‘We shall march prospering, not thro’ his presence; Songs may inspirit us, not from his lyre,’ and ‘Blot out his name, then, record one lost soul more.’ There was not one word of criticism of Lajpat Rai. Only, on the front cover, he printed Lajpat Rai’s photograph!
— Bipan Chandra, India's Struggle for Independence
There was a greater truth — that of a glorious struggle, hard-fought and hard-won, in which many fell martyrs and countless others made sacrifices, dreaming of the day India would be free. That day had come. The people of India saw that too, and on 15 August — despite the sorrow in their hearts for the division of their land danced in the streets with abandon and joy.
— Bipan Chandra, India's Struggle for Independence
... how could Britain operate in India for 300 years and take so little back from it in terms of understanding?
— Jane Wilson-Howarth, Snowfed Waters
13 million Indians will join the workforce every year from now till 2030. They know their prospects aren’t good. Here’s why: in the years from 1972 to 1983—not celebrated as a time of overwhelming prosperity—the total number of jobs in the economy nevertheless grew 2.3 per cent a year. In the years between liberalization in 1991 and today, jobs have grown at an average of only 1.6 per cent a year. But, if these young people have to be absorbed, then jobs must grow at least 3 per cent a year—almost twice the rate at which they have since liberalization. This is simply not happening. In other words, one out of every two youngsters who starts looking for a job next year won’t find one.
— Mihir S. Sharma, Restart: The Last Chance for the Indian Economy
We live in a world today that lacks loving-kindness and compassion for our fellow man and woman. As Gandhi so eloquently stated, "Be the change that you wish to see in the world." We need to strive to be better, to be the image of selflessness. Love and give to those in need--expecting nothing in return. Give out of sincerity and from the depths of our hearts. Have compassion for every man, woman and child, no matter what ethnicity or background they come from. Love is blind. Love is unconditional. Love has the power to heal and redeem, and that is what Humanity should strive for.
— Terry A. O'Neal
None of it made any sense to her - the deceit, the betrayal, the sheer chutzpah of it. Like something from a movie. Who in real life acted this way? But then she remembered this had happened in India, and India was not real life. The most heartbreaking, most desperate, most bizarre stories she had ever heard all came from India. Every story was epic; every emotion was exaggerated; every action was melodramatic. Desperate love, mad obsessions, outbursts of rage, bizarre self sacrifice, self immolation. Young women eat rat poison, jumping off buildings, or burning themselves alive. Young men throwing themselves onto railroad tracks in the path of oncoming trains. And all this self destruction over issues that in the West would be solved by a simple elopement or estrangement from one's parents or a move to a different city.
— Thrity Umrigar, The Story Hour
But doesn't that make sense? That the infinite would be, indeed... infinite? That even the most holy amongst us would only be able to see scattered pieces of the eternal picture at any given time? And that maybe if we could collect those pieces and compare them, a story about God would begin to emerge that resembles and includes everyone? And isn't our individual longing for transcendence all just part of this larger human search for divinity? Don't we each have the right to not stop seeking until we get as close to the source of wonder as possible? Even if it means coming to India and kissing trees in the moonlight for a while?
— Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
The ones who do not believe, Dr.Mukherjee, think like me; just because we don’t know about it, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.
— Sambhav Ratnakar, The Covert Perspective
India is a country for all but not a country for sale. Greedy politicians and greedy businessmen should aware of it.
— Dr Sivakumar Gowder
So long as there are forces of other countries in a place where they have no right to be, irrespective of our rights." (said this to the countries supporting Pakistan's aggression on Kashmir)
— Krishna Menon
The main goal of the regulatory policy has been to control the size of Mumbai by penalizing any new development, fearing that economic success would attract more people.’ Yes, we have deliberately planned for our cities to fail. That has been our intent. If they succeed, then more people would move there, ‘who would have to share an already deficient and immutable infrastructure’. Bertaud concludes: ‘This is a very pessimistic view of urban development.' An understatement, so classically French!
— Mihir S. Sharma
The power of uncovering India’s biggest concealment is in your hands.
— Sambhav Ratnakar, The Covert Perspective
We may not have sewage, drinking water, and Olympic gold medals, but we do have democracy.
— Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger
It never bored them to hear words, words; they breathed them with the cool night air, never stopping to analyse; the name of the poet, Hafiz, Hali, Iqbal, was sufficient guarantee. India—a hundred Indias—whispered outside beneath the indifferent moon, but for the time India seemed one and their own, and they regained their departed greatness by hearing its departure lamented, they felt young again because reminded that youth must fly.
— E.M. Forster, A Passage to India
Cleanliness is a freedom movement for an aspiring Nation. Culture of cleanliness will influence the heygine, health, asthetics and natural setting of the nation, which is a new age currency of a country.
— Vishwas Chavan
Kashayam [was] a drink the vanaras had morning, noon and night, and a few times in between. It was a kind of brew with all kinds of herbs thrown in: the thick, sharp-tasting furry karpuravalli, the strong spicy tulsi, the slightly bitter bark of the coconut tree, pungent pepper roots, the breathcatching nellikai, the cool root of vetriver, and just about anything else that was considered edible. And some things that weren’t. In their craze for novelty, vanaras sometimes flung in new kinds of leaves or berries just because they smelt interesting; whole families had been known to fall ill, or even die. Gind’s family were not a very adventurous lot, and stuck to things they knew not to be poisonous. Still, every day’s kashayam was different, and this was a great topic of conversation among the vanaras.
— Harini Gopalswami Srinivasan, Gind: The Magical Adventures of a Vanara
We all have our patchwork ideas of India, our notions and opinions and prejudices–often fallacious and absurd–of this enormous, disparate country, which, as I take pleasure in reminding newcomers, bigger in population than all but its own continent: Asia. It is a place onto which foreigners have projected their own exotic fantasies and fears, their explanatory and simplifying schemata. And they never seem quite to make up their minds–as they swing from one extreme to the other–whether this country is of great wealth or of appalling poverty, of spiritual renunciation or of unabashed materialism, of fasting or of gluttony, of erotic sophistication or of sexual puritanism, of corruption or of moral superiority. They probably fail to admit that it might be all these things, and even more so, everything in between.
— Sam Miller, A Strange Kind of Paradise: India Through Foreign Eyes
Broaching is a precise machining process in metalworking domain which uses a toothed tool called broach to cut materials into a predetermined shape. Broaching works best for odd shapes where precision machining is needed and hence finds wide application in a number of industry in India and worldwide. Broach resembles a saw to certain extent but unlike a saw, its teeth become larger in size across its length. A broach gives shapes by roughing or removing the material, semi finishing and then by imparting the ultimate finishing. Round or odd shapes, for both internal and external surfaces, can be conveniently formed by broaching. This multi edge tool can shape any metal or metallic alloy but works best on softer materials like plastic, wood, bronze, aluminum, etc. Resharpening of the tool The broach that imparts shape to many work pieces can work properly only when the size and shape of its teeth are perfect. With time and usage, the teeth tend to lose its sharpness and become blunt. Using a dull broach may lead to permanent damage of its teeth. To enhance the broach life and minimize the tooling expense, it needs to be re-sharpened on time. When to opt for resharpeningWhen broaching produce roughly shaped work pieces, it is definitely time for re-sharpening. However, with a little bit of watchfulness, one can even get it sharpened before it delivers poor finish or tearing. Some of the other conditions when this toothed tool will require re-sharpening are:•	Excessive hydraulic press pressure required to run the broach•	Nicks and scratches on the teeth making it dull •	Broach starts drifting•	Cutting edges show signs of wear •	Chattering occurs while broaching Re-sharpening requires high precision. Removing excessive material from the teeth will adversely affect its longevity. Only proper sharpening will ensure time efficiency and high quality output. Teeth welding, grinding of gullets and teeth crest, reshaping teeth to proper taper are some of the methods used in re-sharpening.Broaching, once used for machining only internal keyways, is now used for machining a plethora of shapes and surfaces for high quantity of work pieces. Broaching requires less tools than most of the other machining process and saves considerable amount of output time and hence favoured for high volume production irrespective of its high cost. In India, broaching finds wide application in the automobile industry. Therefore, a large number of players are foraying into the broach manufacturing industry on a regular basis.
— Ankur sood
In the winter of 1987 India was full of iskeems that had gone awry. Agricultural iskeems, political iskeems, economic iskeems, educational iskeems, stop black money iskeems, attract white tourists iskeems, drinkable water iskeems, animal protection iskeems, women's welfare iskeems, nurture children iskeems, don't scan female foetus iskeems, privatization iskeems, medical iskeems, entertainment iskeems, old India iskeems and new India iskeems.We had mastered the art of nomenclature from the white man.Grand labels could disguise unforgivable things.
— Tarun J. Tejpal, The Alchemy of Desire
I like to see you in a sari, with your long hair dressed in a single plait. Don't forget that I married a girl from India because I like my wife to be conservative and feminine.
— K. Kanagalatha, The Goddess in the Living Room
Most people around here prefer undead drivers, so I never get a chance to make any money on steady contracts.
— T.K. Naliaka, Between Dunes and Hard Places
I'd been surprised by the depth of emotion that was invested in that curiously archaic phrase 'great power'. What would it mean, I'd asked myself, to the lives of working journalists, salaried technocrats and so on if India achieved 'great power status'? What were the images evoked by this tag?Now, walking through this echoing old palace, looking at the pictures in the corridors, this aspiration took on, for the first time, the contours of an imagined reality. This is what the nuclearists wanted: to sign treaties, to be pictured with the world's powerful, to hang portraits on their walls, to become ancestors. On the bomb they had pinned their hopes of bringing it all back.
— Amitav Ghosh, Countdown
Marble flooring is to a Punjabi what a foreign degree is to a Tamilian
— Chetan Bhagat, 2 States: The Story of My Marriage
She is too intelligent to be a good daughter-in-law
— Chetan Bhagat, 2 States: The Story of My Marriage
That's the secret - to distract the senses. Have I told you my theory about them? I think that our sight, smell, taste, touch, hearing are all calibrated for the enjoyment of a perfect world. But since the world is imperfect, we must put blinders on the senses.
— Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance
for in the absence of a magistrate (dandadharabhave), the strong will swallow the weak; but under his protection, the weak resist the strong.
— Kautilya, The Arthashastra
Praise to our Indian brothers, and the dark face have his due!Thanks to the kindly dark faces who fought with us, faithful and few,Fought with the bravest among us, and drove them, and smote them, and slew.That ever upon the topment roof our banner in India blew.
— Alfred Tennyson, Tennyson: Poems
At the meeting you behaves exactly as Marathi novelists of the last century tell is husbands do in sari shops.
— Sachin Kundalkar, Cobalt Blue
I thought about my [Punjabi] family. The only nakshatram we think about is the division of petrol pumps when we have to see the girl.
— Chetan Bhagat, 2 States: The Story of My Marriage
The pulse of India throbs in the music and the dance-drama. It is in the realm of living that India exposes herself, without consciousness. The poetry, the stoicism in the face of aching tragedy...the languishing air of over-rich beauty, the heaviness of joss-stick perfume...all these are India. The plaintive shepherd's flute surging across forbidding Himalayan valleys; a wandering Rajasthani minstrel intoning an hour-long ballad, carrying with him the breath of middle ages...
— Peggy Holroyde
a good traveller has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving" Taoist dictum quoted by Sam Miller
— Sam Miller, A Strange Kind of Paradise: India Through Foreign Eyes
She leans over Roop the way Sardarji leaned over Satya the years she cried for children, brushing tears from Roop's heavy lashes with her lips. She strokes her head as a mother would, says. "Slpee little one, we are together now."And Roop sleeps, overcome by the afternoon heat.While Satya watches her.So trusting, so very stupid.
— Shauna Singh Baldwin, What the Body Remembers
As they left the pier and walked into the park, Chahda looked around appreciatively. "Nice place, this. Capital of New Caledonia. Big island, has 8,548 square mile, also has 53,245 peoples. Eleven thousand in Noumea. That is what says the Worrold Alm-in-ack."Rick and Scotty laughed. It was like old times to hear Chahda quoting from The World Almanac. A Bombay beggar boy, he had educated himself with only the Almanac for his textbook, and he had laboriously memorized everything in it.
— John Blaine, The Phantom Shark
She removed the shining black disk from its sleeve, holding it by the edges. After she placed it on the turntable and set the arm into motion, she adjusted the volume on the amplifier, flooding the room with sound. She closed her eyes and began to sway to the music. She could almost feel Clive’s arms guiding her, as he had done so many times over the course of their lives tog
— Ken  Doyle, Bombay Bhel
I am a Dalit in Khairlanji. A Pandit in the Kashmir valley. A Sikh in 1984. I am from the North East of India when I am in Munirka. I am a Muslim in Gujarat; a Christian in Kandhamal. A Bihari in Maharashtra. A Delhi-wallah in Chennai. A woman in North India. A Hindi-speaker in Assam. A Tamilian in MP. A villager in a big city. A confused man in an indifferent world. We're all minorities.We all suffer; we all face discrimination. It is only us resisting this parochialism when in the position of majoritarian power that makes us human. I hope that one day, I can just be an Indian in India - only then can I be me.
— Sami Ahmad Khan
It is the intense spirituality of India, and not any great political structure or social organisation that it has developed, that has enabled it to resist the ravages of time and the accidents of history.
— Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, Indian Philosophy, Volume 1
He was the first prime minister in a long time who did not have a son or a son-in-law in business or real estate
— Sanjaya Baru, The Accidental Prime Minister
He can read and write, but he doesn't get what he's read. He's half-baked. The country is full of people like him, I'll tell you that. And we entrust our glourious parliamentary democracy
— Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger
The idea of Plato that philosophers must be the rulers and directors of society is practiced in India.
— Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, Indian Philosophy, Volume 1
I saw [Chennai]. It had the usual Indian elements like autos, packed public buses, hassled traffic cops and tiny shops that sold groceries, fruits, utensils, clothes or novelty items. However, it did feel different. First, the sign in every shop was in Tamil. The Tamil font resembles those optical illusion puzzles that give you a headache if you stare at them long enough. Tamil women, all of them, wear flkowers in their hair. Tamil men don't believe in pants and wear lungis even in shopping districts. The city is filled with film posters. The heroes' pictures make you feel even your uncles can be movie stars. The heroes are fat, balding, have thick moustaches and the heroine next to them is a ravishing beauty.
— Chetan Bhagat, 2 States: The Story of My Marriage
Whoso meditates on the Omniscient, the Ancient, more minute than the atom, yet the Ruler and Upholder of all, Unimaginable, Brilliant like the Sun, beyond the reach of darkness.
— Shri Purohit Swami, Bhagavad Gita: Annotated & Explained
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
Poetry is a poets work in clandestine chemistry and there is no ethic other than poethics!
— Dona Mayoora
An array of colorful camps dotted the river banks, like a garrison of army on a peace keeping mission. A mini India, many great nations. different people living in the same place, an inversion of the notion of nation.
— Aporva Kala, Life... Love... Kumbh...
In this city, every deserted street corner conceals a crowd. It appears in a minute when something disrupts the way in which the world is supposed to work. It can disappear almost as instantaneously.
— Jerry Pinto, Em and The Big Hoom
But Mehrunnisa did not know then, would never know, by giving her blessings to this marriage she had set into progress a chain of events that would eventually erase her name from history's pages. Or that Arjumand would become the only Mughal woman posterity would easily recognize. Docile, seemingly tractable and troublesome Arjumand would eclipse even Mehrunnisa, cast her in a shadow...because of the monument Khurram would build in Arjumand's memory - the Taj Mahal.
— Indu Sundaresan, The Feast of Roses
This great Mughal Emperor [Akbar] was illiterate; he could neither read nor write. However, that had not stopped Akbar from cultivating the acquaintance of the most learned and cultured poets, authors, musicians, and architects of the time - relying solely on his remarkable memory during conversations with them.
— Indu Sundaresan, The Twentieth Wife
To my countrymenwho gave unto themselves the constitution but not the ability to keep it,who inherited resplendent heritage but not the wisdom to cherish it,who suffer and endure in pain without the perception of their potential.
— Nani Palkhiwala, We, The People: India, the largest Democracy
The battle of Panipat was fought for more than what is usually imagined. It was fought by a people in the far south of India, on behalf of the Mughal Emperor, for the defence of India.
— Uday S. Kulkarni, Solstice at Panipat: 14 January 1761
There was just enough room for the tonga to get through among the bullock-carts, rickshaws, cycles and pedestrians who thronged both the road and the pavement--which they shared with barbers plying their trade out of doors, fortune-tellers, flimsy tea-stalls, vegetable-stands, monkey-trainers, ear-cleaners, pickpockets, stray cattle, the odd sleepy policeman sauntering along in faded khaki, sweat-soaked men carrying impossible loads of copper, steel rods, glass or scrap paper on their backs as they yelled 'Look out! Look out!' in voices that somehow pierced though the din, shops of brassware and cloth (the owners attempting with shouts and gestures to entice uncertain shoppers in), the small carved stone entrance of the Tinny Tots (English Medium) School which opened out onto the courtyard of the reconverted haveli of a bankrupt aristocrat, and beggars--young and old, aggressive and meek, leprous, maimed or blinded--who would quietly invade Nabiganj as evening fell, attempting to avoid the police as they worked the queues in front of the cinema-halls. Crows cawed, small boys in rags rushed around on errands (one balancing six small dirty glasses of tea on a cheap tin tray as he weaved through the crowd) monkeys chattered in and bounded about a great shivering-leafed pipal tree and tried to raid unwary customers as they left the well-guarded fruit-stand, women shuffled along in anonymous burqas or bright saris, with or without their menfolk, a few students from the university lounging around a chaat-stand shouted at each other from a foot away either out of habit or in order to be heard, mangy dogs snapped and were kicked, skeletal cats mewed and were stoned, and flies settled everywhere: on heaps of foetid, rotting rubbish, on the uncovered sweets at the sweetseller's in whose huge curved pans of ghee sizzled delicioius jalebis, on the faces of the sari-clad but not the burqa-clad women, and on the horse's nostrils as he shook his blinkered head and tried to forge his way through Old Brahmpur in the direction of the Barsaat Mahal.
— Vikram Seth, A Suitable Boy
There's no greater joy in life than enjoying power without responsibility. - Mukta Prajapati
— Tuhin A. Sinha, The Edge of Power
Those English always say, "Look before thou leap". But, as is customary with the English, that is looking the wrong way. I say, Ranga, to look before thou look. Then, when thou actually looks before thou leaps, thou will have already done the leaping up here, and the leaping will be much easier, if thou does it at all.
— Ian B.G. Burns
I never aspired to be the PM...Why should I quit over a silly issue like corruption? - Devender Singh
— Tuhin A. Sinha, The Edge of Power
The best thing about India is the freedom that one enjoys here, which is also the worst thing about it.
— Deepak Rana, Sky Beyond the Clouds
I have squandered away my father's political legacy...My personal life is in a mess...Can I turn the tables? - Rhea Malviya
— Tuhin A. Sinha, The Edge of Power
I have no sense of what War is like
—  It may be like disaster Hollywood movies. But i wish india and Pakistan fight a War and devour all
It’s a pity that the land of great leaders like Chandragupta Maurya, Ashoka and Akbar, has to be led by a dummy PM. - Shruti Ranjan
— Tuhin A. Sinha, The Edge of Power
I know I have a strong India connect. Is it Subhash Chandra Bose or my father who left my Austrian mother when I was one? - Catherine Khan
— Tuhin A. Sinha, The Edge of Power
Ideology is dead..Politics is about barter..you give some, take back a lot more. Its business at the end of the day. - Ravi Nehra
— Tuhin A. Sinha, The Edge of Power
Sometimes, in the ancient writing samples found in the Indian subcontinent, we find that a mixture of Harappan and Brahmi features has been used. This definitely points towards a continuous evolutionary process that transformed the Harappan script into the later day Brahmi. This also explains why many of the Harappan signs seem to have been simply carried forward (even in actual form) in the Brahmi script.
— Subhajit Ganguly, Call Of The Lost Ages - A Study Of The Indus Valley Script
Cricket is about a lot more than playing by the rules, Mistry. It’s a gentleman’s game. Don’t you ever forget that.
— Ken Doyle
Kavaata Valves is manufacturers and Exporters of Forge Ball Valve, Forged Ball Valves, Forged Steel Ball Valve in Belgaum, India.
— kavaatavalves
Considering the fact that the Harappan script may have been proto-Brahmi, the underlying language to be expected should be Sanskrit, or proto-Sanskrit, or derivatives of Sanskrit. Many of the rules of evolution that apply to scripts are equivalently true for languages too. Like scripts, languages too render themselves to similar evolutionary inspections, as they too carry imprints of their journey down the ages.
— Subhajit Ganguly, Call Of The Lost Ages: A Study Of The Indus Valley Script
In 2011 India’s Test team was crowned as world cricket’s leading side for the first time in its history. The foundations for this global domination can be traced to a decade earlier, when a career-defining performance by VVS Laxman helped to turn a whole series on its head as India, in the face of a seemingly unassailable deficit, staged an unbelievable recovery to go on and overpower what many considered to be the finest cricket team ever assembled.
— Dave  Wilson, Masterly Batting: 100 Great Test Innings
Any human being has a fundamental right to fight for their rights, but that (own right) can not include anything that is fundamentally trying to deny others what is their fundamental right.The root of Tyranny of Majority that Telangana is witnessing in India since 1956 and is expected to end in early 2014
— Venkat Gandhi
Those who have never seen a leopard under favourable conditions in his natural surroundings can have no conception of the grace of movement, and beauty of colouring, of this the most gracefuL and the most beautiful of all animales in our Indian jungles.
— Jim Corbett, Man-Eaters of Kumaon
Where are the coconut trees bowing allegiance to the wind, the wide open spaces, the verdant green fields?
— Renita D'Silva, Monsoon Memories
There was too much opinion in this country, too many sob stories. Nobody wanted to put a lid on anything; everyone wanted to say it all, about everything. If you as much as said hello to someone on a train or a plane, you were in for the unexpurgated memoirs. Nehru in 1947 had declared us a nation finding utterance - but in fifty years the utterance had become a mad clamour, a crazed babble, an unending howl. We were a nation of Scheherzades, afraid we'd die if, for a moment, we shut up. For myself, I'd mastered a face of steel, and an inscrutable nod. It did not always shut everyone up, but it did to some extent dam the ghastly flow.
— Tarun J. Tejpal, The Story Of My Assassins
And Aziz in an awful rage danced this way and that, not knowing what to do, and cried: "Down with the English anyhow. That's certain. Clear out, you fellows, double quick, I say. We may hate one another, but we hate you most. If I don't make you go, Ahmed will, Karim will, if it's flfty-flve hundred years we shall get rid of you, yes, we shall drive every blasted Englishman into the sea, and then "—he rode against him furiously— "and then," he concluded, half kissing him, "you and I shall be friends.
— E.M. Forster, A Passage to India
But he’s an untouchable, Shirin.’ ‘He’s my Untouchable Prince Charming, then. Only I am allowed to touch him.
— Renita D'Silva, Monsoon Memories
There’s a great drought in my village. People are dying. The price of rice and pulses has rocketed. There is no water anywhere. And here, people are complaining about the rain...
— Renita D'Silva, Monsoon Memories
What am I doing here, Reena? Why am I dancing to the tunes of that old hag?’‘You are saving your family.
— Renita D'Silva, Monsoon Memories
Prideep pointed to the flames of paraffin lamps as they came alive in the distance and cackled in awe at the experience. (…) I was to discover that making tasty soup with one carrot, ten peas and a little dishwater, was his greatest skill. One wondered what the man would be capable of creating with a blender and a non-stick frying-pan.
— Tahir Shah, Beyond The Devil's Teeth
Have you been reading those books that clueless illiterate Duja in charge of the lending library lets you borrow?’ ‘No, Ma.’ ‘Then what put you in mind of devils possessing nuns to take over the church?
— Renita D'Silva, Monsoon Memories
For the first time his senses began to register the exotic, heady atmosphere of Mumbai...the odors most insistently demanded his attention. There were layers upon layers of them, all present at once but individually distinct. They shifted in strength and character with the ocean breeze that blew soft, irregular gusts across his face. First came the sharp tang of engine fuel mingled with an even more acrid burning smell, as though something unnatural had been set alight to blanket the city with a smoldering stench. A shift in the air's direction brought a fresher aroma of salt and brine floating in from the sea. It gave way to the hot smell of spices frying in oil, which in turn incongruously merged with the subtle reek of garbage.
— Kathryn Guare, Deceptive Cadence
You are a girl, Shirin. Girls don’t run around naked.’‘Why?’‘They just don’t.
— Renita D'Silva, Monsoon Memories
She was a sleuth and sleuths had to follow rules. ‘Get to the point
—  don’t allow the subject to digress’ was one of them
Sometimes, it is easier to leave things as they are, rather than to fight, go against the flow.
— Renita D'Silva, Monsoon Memories
Now let me ask my countrymen, Have you ever granted a moment's thought to this very vital problem in the building of our nation ? Have you devised any practical remedies to combat this evil ? Will you, my countrymen, go on without making any intelligent effort to lay the axe at the root of this weaknss and misery ? Will you allow the noted chivalry and the noble hardihood of the Indian to sink into oblivion ? Will you make it a thing entirely of the past ? I implore you, I beseech you, I exhort you my brethren in the name of all that is dearest to you to shake off the lethargy, to show to this world that you were sleeping the sleep of lions only, to rise again with redoubled energy and courage to take the work of rebuilding your nation in right earnest.
— Kodi Rammurthy Naidu
You don’t live in luxury! You are relegated to sleep in the little store room behind the kitchen with the cockroaches and rats and are at the mercy of Mrs. Gupta,’ Reena was indignant. ‘It’s five-star accommodation compared to a mud hut.
— Renita D'Silva, Monsoon Memories
GIVE IF YOU CAN. TAKE IF YOU HAVE TO
— Satyen Nabar, A Bolt of Lightning
Freedom is for the educated people who fought for it. We were slaves of the English, now we will be slaves of the educated Indians—or the Pakistanis.
— Khushwant Singh, Train to Pakistan
What wouldn’t my people give for a few bites of the biryani she ordered me to throw away yesterday because she said it smelt?
— Renita D'Silva, Monsoon Memories
I listen to the sound of India's voices for the last time . Laughter ripples like water . A prayer is a single note held long . There is so much life here . And too much death.I feel a soft brezze caress my face and I look up. An orange ribbon is floating through the air . In India , it's easy to see the wind .
— Cathy Ostlere, Karma
For, to be woken up at five in the morning by the devotional treacle of Anup Jalota, Hari Om Sharan and other confectioners, all of them simultaneously droning out from several different cassette players; to be relentlessly assaulted for the rest of the day and most of the night by the alternately over-earnest and insolent voices of Kumar Sanu, Alisha Chinoy, Baba Sehgal singing 'Sexy, Sexy, Sexy', and 'Ladki hai kya re baba', 'Sarkaye leyo khatiya' and other hideous songs; to have them insidiously leak into your memory and become moronic refrains running over and over again in your mind; to have your environment polluted and your day destroyed in this way was to know a deepening rage, an impulse to murder, and, finally, a creeping fear at one's own dangerous level of derangement. It was to understand the perfectly sane people you read about in the papers, who suddenly explode into violence one fine day; it was to conceive a lasting hatred for the perpetrators, rich or poor, of these auditory atrocities. (on why he left Varanasi after a few days)
— Pankaj Mishra, Butter Chicken in Ludhiana: Travels in Small Town India
I watched the rows and rows of chappals left by devotees outside the Hindu temple and wondered if the homeless boys who sometimes steal our chickens ever steal them, and if they do, are they punished, and if so by whom?
— Renita D'Silva, Monsoon Memories
A profound impression was created by the discourses of Professor GN Chakravarti and Mrs Besant, who is said to have risen to unusual heights of eloquence, so exhilarating were the influences of the gathering. Besides those who represented our society and religions, especially Vivekananda, VR Gandhi, Dharmapala, captivated the public, who had only heard of Indian people through the malicious reports of interested missionaries, and were now astounded to see before them and hear men who represented the ideal of spirituality and human perfectibility as taught in their respective sacred writings.
— Henry Olcott, The Life of Buddha and Its Lessons
Every family has secrets, Reena, and they’re there for a reason.
— Renita D'Silva, Monsoon Memories
The greatest skeptic must now admit that the land and sea-borne trade of India had given her a world-wide fame not only for her gold, spices and silk, but for her religions and philosophies also.
— Virchand Gandhi
I wash the clothes, rinse them and then scrub them again. Will that square little box do that? I am not using any fancy machines when my hands will do.
— Renita D'Silva, Monsoon Memories
You put cow dung on my face?’ ‘Every day religiously until you were three. Why else do you think your skin is so clear?
— Renita D'Silva, Monsoon Memories
Bombay is a city where gossip is treated as a commodity.
— Tahir Shah, Beyond The Devil's Teeth
But then the subject turned to the spiritual life and Meg talked about her many visits to ashrams in India and her admiration for Swami Muktananda and Gurumayi. That got in the way, especially because he told her of his skepticism regarding the guru industry, and suggested she might profitably read Gita Mehta’s book Karma Cola. “Why are you so cynical?” she asked him, as if she genuinely wanted to know the answer, and he said that if you grew up in India it was easy to conclude that these people were fakes. “Yes, of course there are lots of charlatans,” she said, reasonably, “but can’t you discriminate?” He shook his head sadly. “No,” he said. “No, I can’t.” That was the end of their chat.
— Salman Rushdie, Joseph Anton: A Memoir
The Mississippi and its paddle boats, and the rivers of Bengal and their gleaming steamers evoked a similar atmosphere of romance, of long, song-filled voyages, high winds and lonely sunsets.
— Qurratulain Hyder, Fireflies in the Mist
What better hiding place than an old, woodlice-ridden album of photographs!
— Renita D'Silva, Monsoon Memories
We must also remember that in every little village-god and every little superstitious custom is that which we are accustomed to call our religious faith. But local customs are infinite and contradictory. Which are we to obey, and which not to obey? The Brāhmin of Southern India, for instance, would shrink in horror at the sight of another Brahmin eating meat; a Brahmin in the North thinks it a most glorious and holy thing to do—he kills goats by the hundred in sacrifice. If you put forward your custom, they are equally ready with theirs. Various are the customs all over India, but they are local. The greatest mistake made is that ignorant people always think that this local custom is the essence of our religion.
— Swami Vivekananda, The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda: v. 3
With me and India it's all about leaving and returning. Madras is home. It's a very complicated relationship. When you are away too long you get homesick, and when you are there too long you are sick of home.
— Tishani Doshi
And how many hours a day did you do lessons?' said Alice, in a hurry to change the subject.Ten hours the first day,' said the Mock Turtle: 'nine the next, and so on.'What a curious plan!' exclaimed Alice.That's the reason they're called lessons,' the Gryphon remarked: 'because they lessen from day to day.
— Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass
you can get past a mistake, but it's much harder to get past being a cruel person.
— Jennifer Brown, Thousand Words
What kind of knife is this?” Locke held a rounded buttering utensil up for Chains’ inspection. “It’s all wrong. You couldn’t kill anyone with this.”“Well, not very easily, I’ll grant you that, my boy.” Chains guided Locke in the placement of the butter knife and assorted small dishes and bowls. “But when the quality get together to dine, it’s impolite to knock anybody off with anything but poison. That thing is for scooping butter, not slicing windpipes.”“This is a lot of trouble to go to just to eat.”“Well, in Shades’ Hill you may be able to eat cold bacon and dirt pies off one another’s asses for all your old master cares. But now you’re a Gentleman Bastard, emphasis on the Gentleman. You’re going to learn how to eat like this, and how to serve people whoeat like this.
— Scott Lynch, The Lies of Locke Lamora
Mistakes are always mistakes, Or so I've heard them say...But if it teaches a lesson, The mistake will go away.
— Stephen Cosgrove, Hucklebug
Prioritizing hurt, a reminder that the clock was ticking, that some things would be left undone.
— Lisa Genova, Still Alice
Anyway, if you need your heroes to be perfect, you won't have very many. Even Superman had his Kryptonite. I'd rather have my heroes be more like me: trying to do the right thing, sometimes messing up. Making mistakes. Saying you're sorry. And forgiving other people when they mess up, too.
— Madeleine George, The Difference Between You and Me
There are no regrets in life, just lessons.
— Jennifer Aniston
Wise man can make people hearmore lessons than words spoken.
— Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
Along in LifeAs you will goRemember the TimesWhen you must say "NO!
— Stephen Cosgrove, Squeakers
A few years ago, a taxi driver told me about a club & a dog. A waiter taught me a lesson about ladders today. Life is full of class sessions for those who have passion & listen.
— Indeewara Jayawardane
Souls and their lessons.Self-conscious
—  know thyself.Know their soul can't remainFor you're not their half.
Life itself is the lesson.
— Marty Rubin
Entire lives aren’t lessons, but there are lessons in lives.
— Adam Silvera, They Both Die at the End
You have a brain and two hands, look up the answer yourself. You want to know how to get through life? Pay attention.
— Weike Wang, Chemistry
Astrology is nothing but fault in our lines.
— Raubin Chaudhary
f you want something," Tomas had always said "you have to take it. Because nobody's ever going to give it to you. Remember that, little brother.
— Morgan Rhodes, Falling Kingdoms
Being original is beautiful. Copying someone is just being a fool
— Tarang Sinha
But the pirates never showed, and the slaves found themselves trapped on a narrow peninsula. (Lesson: never trust pirates.)
— Erik Sass, The Mental Floss History of the World: An Irreverent Romp through Civilization's Best Bits
You said I don’t exist in one life. What if each of these lives are designed to teach you a lesson so you have the tools to save yourself when you’re alone?” His words strike a strange truth inside me. Do I need saving?
— If I Wake
The process of time brings our transformation to fruition. Free yourself to live through the processes God puts you through because at the appointed time He will cause you to bear much fruit - all for purpose of glorifying Him in the world.
— LaShawnda Jones, The Process of Asking For, Receiving and Giving Love & Forgiveness
As a result of my hike, I am much more inclined to "do" things. I will have fewer "should have done"s even if it means incurring some "wish I hadn't"s.
— David Miller, AWOL on the Appalachian Trail
It turns out that I learned something from my dear old dad after all: firemen are experts at getting into places they shouldn't be.
— Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper