Indian English Quotes

#1. Spanish civilization crushed the Indian. English civilization scorned and neglected him. French civilization embraced and cherished him.

Francis Parkman

#2. Swami Vivekananda: The genuine orator exercises a sort of hypnotism over his audience. I have listened to many orators, Indian, English and American; but Keshub Chunder Sen is easily the greatest of all.

Keshub Chandra Sen

#3. Certainly, historically, there has been more attention given in the international media to Indian English-language writers than to Pakistani English-language writers. But that, in my opinion, was justified by the sheer number of excellent writers coming from India and the Indian diaspora.

Mohsin Hamid

#4. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn.

T. S. Eliot

#5. The chief if not the sole cause of the enslavement of the Indian peoples by the English lies in this very absence of a religious consciousness and of the guidance for conduct which should flow from it - a lack common in our day to all nations East and West, from Japan to England and America alike.

Leo Tolstoy

#6. It would be a sad day for India if it has to inherit the English scale and the English tastes so utterly unsuitable to the Indian environment.

Mahatma Gandhi

#7. IF IT HAS TIRES OR TESTICLES, IT'S GONNA GIVE YOU TROUBLE. - BUMPER STICKER

Darynda Jones

#8. The time is ripe for young Indian authors writing in the English language.

Anurag Shourie

#9. Always be civil to the girls, you never know who they may marry' is a aphorism which has saved many an English spinster from being treated like an Indian widow.

Nancy Mitford

#10. Indian writers have appropriated English as an Indian language, and that gives a certain freshness to the way we write.

Vikas Swarup

#11. Too much of Indian writing in English, it seemed to me, consisted of middle-class people writing about other middle-class people - and a small slice of life being passed off as an authentic portrait of the country.

Aravind Adiga

#12. Farsi Couplet:
Naala-e zanjeer-e Majnun arghanoon-e aashiqanast
Zauq-e aan andaza-e gosh-e ulul-albaab neest


English Translation:
The creaking of the chain of Majnun is the orchestra of the lovers,
To appreciate its music is quite beyond the ears of the wise.

Amir Khusrau

#13. It has always been my conviction that Indian parents who train their children to think and talk in English from their infancy betray their children and their country. They

Mahatma Gandhi

#14. What's so great about the truth? Try lying for a change, it's the currency of the world.

Patrick Marber

#15. An Indian child is brought up in England, and he will speak both English and Hindi very well. English in school and Hindi at home. But here it's English both in schools and at home. Why can't you speak Swahili with your child at home? If this continues we will turn into an English speaking country.

Enock Maregesi

#16. She might be without country, without nation, but inside her there was still a being that could exist and be free, that could simply say I amwithout adding a this, or a that, without saying I am Indian, Guyanese, English, or anything else in the world.

Sharon Maas

#17. The starting point is the recognition that throughout history, religion has been a cause of bloodshed, and it remains so today. Because religion has contributed to the world's problems, it must develop specific and practical ways to help solve those problems.

John C. Danforth

#18. What are you? German? American? English? Greek? Japanese? Turkish? French? Indian? Chinese? These are not real, these are virtual! You are human! This is what is real!

Mehmet Murat Ildan

#19. My family is Abenaki Indian on my mother's side. My father's side of the family is Slovak, and we also have some English ancestry.

Joseph Bruchac

#20. Void is when there is absolutely nothing there and the nothing is natural, a complete vacuum. But empty - with empty, you are aware of what's supposed to be there. Empty means something is missing.

David Levithan

#21. Farsi Couplet:
Agar firdaus bar roo-e zameen ast,
Hameen ast-o hameen ast-o hameen ast.


English Translation:
If there is a paradise on earth,
It is this, it is this, it is this

Amir Khusrau

#22. We are men without ambition, and all we want is to be left alone, in peace so that we can try and be happy. So few people will understand this simplicity.

Upamanyu Chatterjee

#23. In writing 'The Satanic Verses,' I think I was writing for the first time from the whole of myself. The English part, the Indian part. The part of me that loves London, and the part that longs for Bombay. And at my typewriter, alone, I could indulge this.

Salman Rushdie

#24. When I got to Florida, I was a British kid, but I was also an Indian kid: a brown kid with an English accent. Talk about being an outsider. And that's become the theme of a lot of the stuff I write about.

Aasif Mandvi

#25. Khusrau darya prem ka, ulti wa ki dhaar,
Jo utra so doob gaya, jo dooba so paar.

English Translation.

Oh Khusrau, the river of love
Runs in strange directions.
One who jumps into it drowns,
And one who drowns, gets across.

Amir Khusrau

#26. In 1776, at the point of severance, except for an infusion of words from east coast Indian languages, the English language of North America was not in any radical way dissimilar from that of what the American settlers called the mother country.

Robert Burchfield

#27. There are plenty of good Indian writers in English, and none of us feel we are carrying the burden of being a poster boy.

Vikram Seth

#28. 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

#29. Paraguayans have no Italian blood and are half Guarani [Indian] blood. And the Chileans call themselves "the English of South America," which actually couldn't be further from the truth.

John Gimlette

#30. God is calling you a mighty warrior. This study is about God's teaching us to live like the mighty warriors we can be in Him. Are you sick of deceit and ready to learn how to live like a mighty warrior?

Beth Moore

#31. Half the people in London were not English anyway: they were Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Caribbean, Indian and Chinese. All the drug dealers came from islands: Maltese men sold pep pills,

Ken Follett

#32. If he was right, here was our quiet English house suddenly invaded by a devilish Indian Diamond - bringing after it a conspiracy of living rogues, set loose on us by the vengeance of a dead man.

Wilkie Collins

#33. All my early books are written as if I were Indian. In England, I had started writing as if I were English; now I write as if I were American. You take other people's backgrounds and characters; Keats called it negative capability.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

#34. So many Indian novels, quite unfairly, do not get the prominence they should because they have been written in a language other than English.

Vikram Seth

#35. I was born in Mumbai, but I grew up in England, and then my adulthood has been in the States. I'm an American stuffed with an English person with an Indian person inside. I feel like those things kind of inform me in some way, which I think helps me as an actor.

Aasif Mandvi