Top 33 William Dalrymple Quotes
#1. William Dalrymple has superseded Mark Tully as the voice of India ... He may well be the greatest travel writer of his generation.
Robert Twigger
#2. William Dalrymple called me a war junkie in his silly book. No, I don't have a desire for it. I'm appalled and infuriated by it.
Robert Fisk
#3. For the British after 1857, the Indian Muslim became an almost subhuman creature, to be classified in unembarrassedly racist imperial literature alongside such other despised and subject specimens, such as Irish Catholics or 'the Wandering Jew'.
William Dalrymple
#4. Such are the humiliations of the travel writer in the late 20th century: go to the ends of the earth to search for the most exotic heretics in the world, and you will find that they have cornered the kebab business at the end of your street in London.
William Dalrymple
#5. Partition was a total catastrophe for Delhi,' she said. 'Those who were left behind are in misery. Those who were uprooted are in misery. The Peace of Delhi is gone. Now it is all gone.
William Dalrymple
#6. According to the Puranas, the Kali Yug is the last age before the world is destroyed by the 'fire of one thousand suns', after which the cycle reaches its conclusion and time momentarily stops, before the wheel turns again and a new cycle begins. Rather
William Dalrymple
#7. Delhi was once a paradise, Where Love held sway and reigned; But its charm lies ravished now And only ruins remain. No
William Dalrymple
#8. The same year that Ghalib died in Delhi, 1869, there was born in Porbandar in Gujarat a boy called Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. It would be with the political movements headed by Gandhi, rather than those represented by Zafar, or indeed by Lord Canning, that the future of India would lie.
William Dalrymple
#9. On the road, as in many other aspects of Indian life, Might is Right.
William Dalrymple
#10. This? I thought, after a twenty-year civil war: This? Armageddon I expected; but Armani I did not.
William Dalrymple
#11. As the political sky darkened, the court was lost in a last idyll of pleasure gardens, courtesans and mushairas, or poetic symposia, Sufi devotions and visits to pirs, as literary and religious ambition replaced the political variety.
William Dalrymple
#12. the Kauravas and the Pandavas turned from demi-gods into cave men, the great war reduced to a tribal feud fought with sticks and stones.
William Dalrymple
#13. For all its faults we love this city.' Then, after a pause, she added: 'After all, we built it.
William Dalrymple
#14. At its purest, Jainism is almost an atheistic religion, and the much venerated images of the Tirthankaras in temples represent not so much a divine presence as a profound divine absence. I
William Dalrymple
#15. During our first month in the flat, however, Mr Puri was on his best behaviour. Apart from twice proposing marriage to my wife, he behaved with perfect decorum.
William Dalrymple
#16. He disdains such cowardly acts as looking in wing mirrors or using his indicators. His Ambassador is his chariot, his klaxon his sword. Weaving into the oncoming traffic, playing 'chicken' with the other taxis, Balvinder Singh is a Raja of the Road.
William Dalrymple
#17. He is a thinker,' wrote Jacquemont in his memoir, 'who finds nothing but solitude in that exchange of words without ideas which is dignified by the name of conversation in the society of this land.
William Dalrymple
#18. India has always had a strange way with her conquerors. In defeat, she beckons them in, then slowly seduces, assimilates and transforms them.
William Dalrymple
#19. Zafar always put huge emphasis on his role as a protector of the Hindus and the moderator of Muslim demands. He never forgot the central importance of preserving the bond between his Hindu and Muslim subjects, which he always recognised was the central stitching that held his capital city together.
William Dalrymple
#20. The Tughluks have gone; Tughlukabad is a ruin; only Nizamuddin remains.
William Dalrymple
#21. There was that all-pervasive evening scent of cut grass and jasmine.
William Dalrymple
#22. For me they go hand in hand. When I travel it makes me want to write, when I read it makes me want to travel.
William Dalrymple
#23. Whoever has built a new city in Delhi has always lost it: the Pandava brethren, Prithviraj Chauhan, Feroz Shah Tughluk, Shah Jehan ... They all built new cities and they all lost them. We were no exception.
William Dalrymple
#25. He was holding a tray. On the tray were two glasses of milky Indian chai. 'Chota hazari, sahib,' said Ladoo. Bed tea. 'What a nice gesture,' I said returning to Olivia. 'Mrs Puri has sent us up some tea.' 'I wish she had sent it up two hours later,' said Olivia from beneath her sheets.
William Dalrymple
#26. Finally, at two minutes to three, in the sweltering heat of a Mesopotamian summer afternoon, I crossed the no-man's land into Syria.
William Dalrymple
#27. Mr William, he said, in my life six times have I crashed, and on not one occasion have I ever been killed.( Bevinda Singh taxi driver from City of Djinns
William Dalrymple
#28. To subdue and crush the masses of a nation by military force, when all are unanimous in the determination to be free, is to attempt the imprisonment of a whole people; all such projects must be temporary and transient, and terminate in a catastrophe...
William Dalrymple
#29. But the ifs of history: if Cleopatra's nose had been one inch longer,' he said, 'would Antony have lost the battle of Actium?
William Dalrymple
#30. And it would be nice if the roof was a bit stronger. Then the peacocks wouldn't keep falling through. I don't mind during the day, but I hate waking up at night to find a peacock in bed with me.
William Dalrymple
#31. So vast is India, and so uniquely resilient and deeply rooted are her intertwined social and religious institutions, that all foreign intruders are sooner or later either shaken off or absorbed.
William Dalrymple
#32. The water moves on, a little faster than before, yet still the great river flows. It is as fluid and unpredictable in its moods as it has ever been, but it meanders within familiar banks.
William Dalrymple
#33. What matters it, O breeze, If now has come the spring When I have lost them both The garden and my nest?
William Dalrymple
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