R.K. Narayan Quotes

• Life is about making right things and going on.

  R.K. Narayan

  Life Is, Right Thing

  142 Copy quote

• 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

  Mean, Men, Criticism

  R.K. Narayan (2001). “The Writerly Life: Selected Non-fiction”, p.72, Penguin Books India

  101 Copy quote

• You become writer by writing. It is a yoga.

  R.K. Narayan

  Yoga, Writing

  115 Copy quote

• A profound unmitigated loneliness is the only truth of life.

  R.K. Narayan

  Life, Loneliness, Profound

  R. K. Narayan (1978). “The English Teacher”, p.177, University of Chicago Press

  59 Copy quote

• We come together only to go apart again. The law of life can't be avoided. The law comes into operation the moment we detach ourselves from our mother's womb. All struggle & misery in life is due to our attempt to arrest this law or get away from it or in allowing ourselves to be hurt by it. The fact must be recognized. A profound unmitigated loneliness is the only truth of life. All else is false. The law of life. No sense in battling against it.

  R.K. Narayan

  Mother, Hurt, Loneliness

  R. K. Narayan (2000). “Memories of Malgudi”, p.274, Penguin Books India

  87 Copy quote

• We always question the bonafides of the man who tells us unpleasant facts.

  R.K. Narayan

  Men, Facts

  R. K. Narayan (1988). “A Writer's Nightmare: Selected Essays, 1958-1988”, p.87, Penguin Books India

  63 Copy quote

• 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

  Like Love, People, Mad

  R. K. Narayan (2009). “Swami and Friends, The Bachelor of Arts, The Dark Room, The English Teacher”, p.251, Everyman's Library

  68 Copy quote

• This is my child. I planted it. I saw it grow. I loved it. Don't cut it down.

  R.K. Narayan

  Children, Cutting, Saws

  R. K. Narayan (2006). “Malgudi Days”, p.100, Penguin

  60 Copy quote

• 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

  Progress, Half, Frogs

  52 Copy quote

• Death and its associates, after the initial shock, produce callousness.

  R.K. Narayan

  Produce, Shock, Initials

  R. K. Narayan (2009). “Swami and Friends, The Bachelor of Arts, The Dark Room, The English Teacher”, p.517, Everyman's Library

  40 Copy quote

• The difference between a simpleton and an intelligent man, according to the man who is convinced that he is of the latter category, is that the former wholeheartedly accepts all things that he sees and hears while the latter never admits anything except after a most searching scrutiny. He imagines his intelligence to be a sieve of closely woven mesh through which nothing but the finest can pass.

  R.K. Narayan

  Intelligent, Men, Differences

  R. K. Narayan (1988). “A Writer's Nightmare: Selected Essays, 1958-1988”, p.87, Penguin Books India

  49 Copy quote

• This education has reduced us to a nation of morons; we were strangers to our own culture and camp followers of another culture, feeding on leavings and garbage . . . What about our own roots? . . . I am up against the system, the whole method and approach of a system of education which makes us morons, cultural morons, but efficient clerks for all your business and administration offices.

  R.K. Narayan

  Education, Roots, Office

  R. K. Narayan (2012). “The English Teacher”, p.328, Vintage

  44 Copy quote

• 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

  Daughter, Mother, Law

  R. K. Narayan (1988). “A Writer's Nightmare: Selected Essays, 1958-1988”, p.88, Penguin Books India

  40 Copy quote

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