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1 " Common sense will nearly always stand you in better stead than a slavish adherence to the conventions. "
― , Shadow of the Moon
2 " If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer: let him step to the music that he hears. "
― , The Far Pavilions
3 " India and its peoples; not the British India of cantonments and Clubs, or the artificial world of hill stations and horse shows, but that other India: that mixture of glamour and tawdriness, viciousness and nobility. A land full of gods and gold and famine. Ugly as a rotting corpse and beautiful beyond belief … "
4 " for the public, it seemed, preferred to believe that which disturbed it least and to ignore troublesome information. Which is a failing common to all nations. "
5 " I cannot see anything admirable in stupidity, injustice and sheer incompetence in high places, and there is too much of all three in the present administration. "
6 " Ash said slowly: ‘I don’t believe that anyone can have no regrets … Perhaps there are times when even God regrets that He created such a thing as man. But one can put them away and not dwell upon them; and I’ll have you, Larla … that alone is enough happiness for any man.’ He "
7 " Because men are sentimental over women they will throw away military advantages, and hesitate and weigh the chances of failure when attack is their best or only hope, and lose their opportunity because they "have to think of the women and children". Men who would otherwise not dream of surrendering will make terms with an enemy in return for the safety of a handful of women. If a man is killed, it is an accident of war; but if a woman or a child is killed it is a barbarous murder and a hundred lives - or a thousand - are sacrificed to avenge it. It is only a man like John Nicholson who has the courage to write, and mean it, that the safety of "women and children in some crises is such a very minor consideration that it ceases to be a consideration at all". If only more men thought like that you could all stay in Lunjore and be damned to you! "
8 " Perhaps I myself am a pompous and conceited old fool. And perhaps if these fools I complain of were French or Dutch or German I would not mind so much, because then I could say 'What else can you expect?' and feel superior. It is because they are men of my own race that I would have them all good. "
9 " There is no particular merit in fighting for your own skin when you know that it is fight or die, but there is considerable merit in being prepared to die when you know you can escape quite easily. Put at its lowest, there is a certain stubborn foolhardy heroism in that. "
10 " But surely Uncle Akbar could not be dead as they were dead? There must be something indestructible — something that remained of men who had walked and talked with one and told one stories, men whom one had loved and looked up to. But where had it gone? It was all very puzzling, and he did not understand. "
11 " What could be more entrancing than a carefree nomadic existence camping, moving, exploring strange places and the ruins of forgotten empires, sleeping under canvas or the open sky, and giving no thought to the conventions and restriction of the modern world? "
12 " Nor have I become so blind that I cannot see what is written on your face, or so deaf that I cannot hear what is in your voice; and I am not yet so old that I cannot remember my own youth "
13 " Did you ever read Aurora Leigh? – “Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God; but only he who sees takes off his shoes. "
14 " Have you really become so much an Angrezi that you believe your people have only to say “It is forbidden”, for such old customs as this to cease immediately? Bah! "
15 " I do not doubt that you would have done all that was in your power to make her happy. But it is not in your power to build a new world; or to turn back time "
16 " people everywhere are suspicious of strangers and hostile towards anyone different from themselves "
17 " they were a fanatically independent people, much addicted to intrigue, treachery and murder, and that among their other national traits was an intolerance of rulers (or, if it came to that, of any form of authority whatsoever, other than their own desires). "
18 " It was an age of lavishness. Of enormous meals, enormous families, enormous spreading skirts and an enormous, spreading Empire. An age of gross living, grinding poverty, inconceivable prudery, insufferable complacency and incomparable enterprise. "
19 " In the absence of any concrete evidence. I plump for Leonard Stock as the murderer. First, because he's the most unlikely person, and as anyone who has ever read a murder story knows, it's always the most unlikely person who turns out to have done the deed--and fifty thousand authors can't be wrong. "
― , Death in the Andamans
20 " People everywhere preferred to make their own mistakes, and resented strangers (even efficient and well-meaning ones) interfering with their affairs "