Khushwant Quotes

#1. Unless a miracle saves us,' Khushwant Singh writes, 'the country will break up. It will not be Pakistan or any other foreign power that will destroy us; we will commit hara-kiri.

Khushwant Singh

#2. Not forever does the bulbul sing In balmy shades of bowers, Not forever lasts the spring Nor ever blossom flowers. Not forever reigneth joy, Sets the sun on days of bliss, Friendships not forever last, They know not life, who know not this.

Khushwant Singh

#3. We are of the mysterious East. No proof, just faith. No reason, just faith.

Khushwant Singh

#4. Men have many faults, women only two: Everything they say, and everything they do.

Khushwant Singh

#5. We are a nation of fence-sitters, face-flatterers and back-biters.

Khushwant Singh

#6. 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

#7. Oh the gladness of her gladness when she's glad, And the sadness of her sadness when she's sad; But the gladness of her gladness, And the sadness of her sadness, Are as nothing, Charles, To the badness of her badness when she is bad.

Khushwant Singh

#8. In the absence of men all women are chaste.

Khushwant Singh

#9. Passions have made mortals of us men. If men were not slaves of passion, they would have been Gods, each one.

Khushwant Singh

#10. A husband comes home from satsang and greets his wife, lifts her up and carries her around the house. His wife is surprised and asks, 'Did the Swami ji preach about being romantic today?' Her husband replies, 'No, he said we must carry our burdens and sorrows with a smile.

Khushwant Singh

#11. how much of what he told me of his past was true and how much he made up to hold my interest.

Khushwant Singh

#12. The eye hath ruined me,' the heart complained. 'The heart has lost me,' the eye replied. I know not which told the truth, which lied Between, the two, it was Meer who died.

Khushwant Singh

#13. In America, they make a lot of fuss over little things.

Khushwant Singh

#14. Consciousness of the bad is an essential prerequisite to the promotion of the good.

Khushwant Singh

#15. Jahan mein ehle-e-imaan soorat-e-khursheed jeetay hain,
Idhar doobey, udhar nikley; udhar doobey, idhar nikley

In this world, men of faith and self-confidence are like the sun,
They go down on one side to come up on the other.

Allama Iqbal

#16. In a country which had accepted caste distinctions for many centuries, inequality had become an inborn mental concept.

Khushwant Singh

#17. with their weapons. One struck it with his

Khushwant Singh

#18. No one has invented a condom for the pen yet

Khushwant Singh

#19. The last to learn of gossip are the parties concerned

Khushwant Singh

#20. What do the Gandhi-caps in Delhi know about the Punjab? What is happening on the other side in Pakistan does not matter to them. They have not lost their homes and belongings; they haven't had their mothers, wives, sisters and daughters raped and murdered in the streets.

Khushwant Singh

#21. A Turk for toughness, for hands that never tire; An Indian for her rounded bosom bursting with milk; A Persian for her tight crotch and her coquetry; An Uzbeg to thrash as a lesson for the three.

Khushwant Singh

#22. There is no wine in the world as heady as applause; and it has the same effect. It temporarily subdues anxiety and restores confidence.

Khushwant Singh

#23. There is no wine in this world as heady as applause.

Khushwant Singh

#24. Nature provides that a man who slaves all day should spend the hours of the night in a palace full of houris whereas a king who wields the sceptre by day should have his sleep disturbed by nightmares of rebellion and assassination.

Khushwant Singh

#25. According to the Hindus, the Muslims were to blame. The fact is, both sides killed. Both shot and stabbed and speared and clubbed. Both tortured. Both raped.

Khushwant Singh

#26. The prose-poems of the Japji envelop us by opening our third eye to the experience of concrete manifestations of nature, the overall circle of light, which shone in the nimbus, which people saw around Nanak's face, lit up by the shimmering glow of the flame which burnt inside him. It

Khushwant Singh

#27. That's Delhi. When life gets too much for you all you need to do is to spend an hour at Nigambodh Ghat,watch the dead being put to flames and hear their kin wail for them. Then come home and down a couple of pegs of whisky. In Delhi, death and drink make life worth living,

Khushwant Singh

#28. One thing Mr Chaudhuri has overlooked in his remarkable thesis on Hinduism: no religious community in India would take this tarring and feathering of all that they hold sacred save the Hindus.

Khushwant Singh

#29. I asked my soul: What is Delhi? She replied: The world is the body and Delhi its life. Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib

Khushwant Singh

#30. A Sikh woman takes the surname Kaur on baptism. Kaur was also a common surname for Rajput women and means both a princess and lioness.

Khushwant Singh

#31. But big people's illnesses are always made to sound big. The simple shutting and opening of the royal arse-hole was made to sound as if the world was coming to an end.

Khushwant Singh

#32. Voh waqt bhee deykha taareekh kee gharion nay Lamhon nay khataa kee thee Sadiyon nay sazaa paayee (The ages of history have recorded times when for an error made in a few seconds centuries had to pay the price.)

Khushwant Singh

#33. We also knew that it was in the nature of an empty stomach to produce illusions of grandeur.

Khushwant Singh

#34. Once through this ruined city did I pass
I espied a lonely bird on a bough and asked
'What knowest thou of this wilderness?'
It replied: 'I can sum it up in two words:
'Alas, Alas!

Khushwant Singh

#35. If the blanket of man's fate has been woven black, even the waters of Zam Zam and Kausar cannot wash it white.

Khushwant Singh

#36. The need of our times is to revive the Nehruvian notion of secularism.

Khushwant Singh

#37. The Indian peasant is the world's champion shitter. Stacks of chappaties and mounds of mustard leaf-mash down the hatch twice a day; stacks of shit a.m. and p.m.

Khushwant Singh

#38. Your principle should be to see everything and say nothing. The world changes so rapidly that if you want to get on you cannot afford to align yourself with any person or point of view.

Khushwant Singh

#39. missing anything. The northern horizon, which had turned a bluish grey, showed orange again. The orange turned into copper and then into a luminous russet. Red tongues of flame leaped into the black sky. A soft

Khushwant Singh

#40. We had heard that the people of Delhi loved their city as bees love flowers. But we could not believe that the child of a courtesan would prefer to live in a Delhi brothel rather than in our palace in Iran!

Khushwant Singh

#41. I believe I did succeed in making Indian uslims look upon me as a friend: when I was nominated to be a member of the Rajya Sabha many said, "We have another Muslim in Parliament." Others who disliked my views called me an unpaid agent of Pakistan. I treated both views as compliments.

Khushwant Singh

#42. Morality is a matter of money. Poor people cannot afford to have morals. So they have religion.

Khushwant Singh

#43. I believe that the essence of every person's religion should be the endeavour not to hurt another person or living thing and to preserve his environment.

Khushwant Singh

#44. What the four seasons of the year mean to the European, the one season of monsoon means to the Indian.

Khushwant Singh

#45. When the world is itself draped in the mantle of night, the mirror of the mind is like the sky in which thoughts twinkle like stars.

Khushwant Singh

#46. When you have counted eighty years and more, Time and Fate will batter at your door; But if you should survive to be a hundred, Your life will be death to the very core.

Khushwant Singh

#47. His mind was like the delicate spring of a watch, which quivers for several hours after it has been touched.

Khushwant Singh

#48. A QUESTION OF SALARY Santa was filling up an application form for a job. He was not sure as to what to put in the column 'Salary Expected'. After much thought he wrote : 'Yes, please.

Khushwant Singh

#49. (Whichever way you look there is a din of tumult; Whichever way you go there are flames and torches; For tonight this world is heavy with labour pain; To give birth to a world which will forever remain.)

Khushwant Singh

#50. The doer must do only when the receiver is ready to receive. Otherwise, the act is wasted.

Khushwant Singh

#51. I do not restrain desire Until my desire is satisfied Or until my body touches hers, Or my soul from my body goes. When I am dead, open my tomb, You will see my heart on fire And my shroud in smoke.

Khushwant Singh