Top 54 R.K. Narayan Quotes
#1. 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
#2. You threw a stone into a gutter it would only spurt filth in your face.
R.K. Narayan
#4. Past is gone, present is going, and tomorrow is day after tomorrow's yesterday. So why worry about anything? God is in all this.
R.K. Narayan
#5. A profound unmitigated loneliness is the only truth of life.
R.K. Narayan
#6. Society presses upon us all the time. The progress of the last half century is the progress of the frog out of his well.
R.K. Narayan
#7. You become [a] writer by writing. It is a yoga.
R.K. Narayan
#8. Do you realize how few ever really understand how fortunate they are in their circumstances?
R.K. Narayan
#9. 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
#10. people only follow their inclinations, and sooner or later find their reward or retribution. That's the natural law of life,
R.K. Narayan
#11. This is my child. I planted it. I saw it grow. I loved it. Don't cut it down ...
R.K. Narayan
#12. At this moment, let us not forget that my authority has been challenged not by a warrior but by a monkey!
R.K. Narayan
#13. It is stimulating to live in a society that is not standardized or mechanized, and is free from monotony.
R.K. Narayan
#14. We always question the bonafides of the man who tells us unpleasant facts.
R.K. Narayan
#15. 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.
R.K. Narayan
#16. Knowledge, like food, must be taken within limits. You must know only as much as you need, and not more.
R.K. Narayan
#17. What can we do with a creature who returns to his doom with such a free heart?
R.K. Narayan
#18. The only trouble was that the scripture master, Mr. Ebenzar, was a fanatic.
R.K. Narayan
#19. The gods grow jealous of too much contentment anywhere, and they show their displeasure all of a sudden.
R.K. Narayan
#20. Life is about making right things and going on..
R.K. Narayan
#21. All the jarring, rattling and clanking, spurting and hissing of the moving train of the train dissolved in the distance into something that was half a sob and half a sigh.
R.K. Narayan
#22. 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
#23. Every minute becomes a yesterday and is lost forever.
R.K. Narayan
#24. Every creature is born with a potential store of violence.
R.K. Narayan
#25. The compartment built to 'seat 8 passengers; 4 British Troops, or 6 Indian Troops' now carried only nine.
R.K. Narayan
#26. Certain things acquired an evil complexion if phrased, but remained harmless in the mind.
R.K. Narayan
#27. 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
#28. You become writer by writing. It is a yoga.
R.K. Narayan
#29. When one is seized with a passion to understand one's self, one has to leave behind all normal life and habitual modes of thought.
R.K. Narayan
#30. What you see is my old shell; inside it's all changed. You can't share my life.
R.K. Narayan
#31. violence cannot be everlasting. Sooner or later it has to go, if not through wisdom, definitely through decrepitude, which comes on with years, whether one wants it or not.
R.K. Narayan
#32. Two and two, four; four and three, something else. Something into something, more; some more into less. Oh, God, numbers did give me a headache.
R.K. Narayan
#33. It's often said that God made man in His own image, it's also true that man makes God in his own image.
R.K. Narayan
#34. 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
#35. The sun set beyond thesea, 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
#36. 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.
R.K. Narayan
#37. 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
#38. If we do not accomplish it in time, what has begun with a monkey may not end with a monkey. Next even a swarm of mosquitoes may decide to challenge your authority.
R.K. Narayan
#39. Even when you realize that the one before you is an enemy and must be treated sternly, do not hurt with words.
R.K. Narayan
#40. 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
#41. Project is a self-contained phrase and may or may not be capable of elaboration.
R.K. Narayan
#42. everyone is acting a part all the time, knowingly or unknowingly.
R.K. Narayan
#43. Death and its associates, after the initial shock, produce callousness.
R.K. Narayan
#44. If he(Mani) were Swaminathan, he would have closed the whole incident at the beginning by hurling an ink-bottle, if nothing bigger was available, at the teacher.
R.K. Narayan
#45. But you are not my wife. You are a woman who will go to bed with anyone who flatters your antics. That's
R.K. Narayan
#46. It seems to me that we generally do not have a correct measure of our own wisdom.
R.K. Narayan
#47. But there is this peculiarity about heat: it appears to affect only those that think of it.
R.K. Narayan
#48. Swaminathan had never thought that this story contained a moral. But now he felt that it must have one since the question paper mentioned it.
R.K. Narayan
#49. 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. Man
R.K. Narayan
#50. 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
#51. How can two living entities possessing intelligence and judgement ever be tied together for a lifetime?
R.K. Narayan
#52. 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
#53. 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
#54. No one ever accepts criticism so cheerfully. Neither the man who utters it nor the man who invites it really means it.
R.K. Narayan
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