Shantaram Quotes - Page 2

• We live on because we can love, and we love because we can forgive.

  Gregory David Roberts

  Forgiving

  "Shantaram". Book by Gregory David Roberts, 2003.

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• At first, when we truly love someone, our greatest fear is that the loved one will stop loving us. What we should fear and dread, of course, is that we won't stop loving them, even after they're dead and gone.

  Gregory David Roberts

  Greatest Fear, Gone, Firsts

  Gregory David Roberts (2004). “Shantaram: A Novel”, p.553, Macmillan

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• Sometimes we love with nothing more than hope. Sometimes we cry with everything except tears.

  Gregory David Roberts

  Life, Tears, Sometimes

  Gregory David Roberts (2004). “Shantaram: A Novel”, p.307, Macmillan

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• While I was chained to a wall and being tortured, I realized, through the screaming of my mind, that even in that shackled, bloody helplessness, I was still free: free to hate the men who were torturing me, or to forgive them. It doesn't sound like much, I know. But in the flinch and bite of the chain, when it's all you've got, that freedom is a universe of possibility. And the choice you make between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life.

  Gregory David Roberts

  Wall, Hate, Men

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• The world is run by one million evil men, ten million stupid men, and a hundred million cowards.

  Gregory David Roberts

  Running, Stupid, Men

  Gregory David Roberts (2004). “Shantaram: A Novel”, p.309, Macmillan

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• For all his wisdom, he did not know that love cannot be tested. Honesty can be tested and loyalty. But there is not test for love. Love goes on forever, once it begins, even if we come to hate the one we love. Love goes on forever because love is born in the part of us that does not die.

  Gregory David Roberts

  Loyalty, Honesty, Hate

  Gregory David Roberts (2004). “Shantaram: A Novel”, p.483, St. Martin's Press

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• The simple and astonishing truth about India and Indian people is that when you go there, and deal with them, your heart always guides you more wisely than your head. There's nowhere else in the world where that's quite so true.

  Gregory David Roberts

  Heart, Simple, People

  Gregory David Roberts (2004). “Shantaram: A Novel”, p.35, Macmillan

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• Fate always gives you two choices, the one you should take, and the one you do.

  Gregory David Roberts

  Fate, Two, Giving

  Gregory David Roberts (2012). “Shantaram”, p.523, Hachette UK

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• There's a kind of luck that's not much more than being in the right place at the right time, a kind of inspiration that's not much more than doing the right thing in the right way, and both only really happen to you when you empty your heart of ambition, purpose, and plan; when you give yourself, completely, to the golden, fate-filled moment.

  Gregory David Roberts

  Inspiration, Heart, Ambition

  Gregory David Roberts (2004). “Shantaram: A Novel”, p.110, Macmillan

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• Every life, every love, every action and feeling and thought has its reason and significance: its beginning, and the part it plays in the end. Sometimes, we do see.

  Gregory David Roberts

  Play, Feelings, Action

  Gregory David Roberts (2004). “Shantaram: A Novel”, p.765, Macmillan

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• I don't know what frightens me more, the power that crushes us, or our endless ability to endure it.

  Gregory David Roberts

  Crush, Powerful, Endless

  Gregory David Roberts (2004). “Shantaram: A Novel”, p.299, Macmillan

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• A good man is as strong as the right woman needs him to be.

  Gregory David Roberts

  Strong, Men, Good Man

  Gregory David Roberts (2004). “Shantaram: A Novel”, p.567, Macmillan

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• The truth is that there are no good men, or bad men,' he said. 'It is the deeds that have goodness or badness in them. There are good deeds, and bad deeds. Men are just men - it is what they do, or refuse to do, that links them to good and evil. The truth is that an instant of real love, in the heart of anyone - the noblest man alive or the most wicked - has the whole purpose and process and meaning of life within the lotus-folds of its passion. The truth is that we are all, every one of us, every atom, every galaxy, and every particle of matter in the universe, moving toward God.

  Gregory David Roberts

  Real, Moving, Passion

  Gregory David Roberts (2004). “Shantaram: A Novel”, p.179, Macmillan

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• We carry oceans inside of us, in our blood and our sweat. And we are crying the oceans, in our tears.

  Gregory David Roberts

  Ocean, Blood, Sweat

  Gregory David Roberts (2004). “Shantaram: A Novel”, p.331, Macmillan

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• Do you know the story of the scorpion and the frog? You know, the frog agrees to carry the scorpion across the river, because the scorpion promises not to sting him. And then the scorpion stings the frog, half way across the river. The drowning frog asks him why he did it, when they'll both drown, and the scorpion says that he's a scorpion, and it's his nature to sting.

  Gregory David Roberts

  Rivers, Promise, Half

  Gregory David Roberts (2004). “Shantaram: A Novel”, p.59, Macmillan

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• The burden of happiness can only be relieved by the balm of suffering.

  Gregory David Roberts

  Suffering, Burden, Relieved

  Gregory David Roberts (2004). “Shantaram: A Novel”, p.263, Macmillan

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• Good soldiers are defined by what they can endure, not by what they can inflict.

  Gregory David Roberts

  Soldier, Endure, Defined

  Gregory David Roberts (2004). “Shantaram: A Novel”, p.525, Macmillan

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• Some things are just so sad that only your soul can do the crying for you.

  Gregory David Roberts

  Soul, Cry, So Sad

  Gregory David Roberts (2004). “Shantaram: A Novel”, p.114, Macmillan

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• Silence is the tortured man's revenge.

  Gregory David Roberts

  Revenge, Men, Silence

  Gregory David Roberts (2004). “Shantaram: A Novel”, p.357, Macmillan

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• Cowardece is often just another name for being taken by surprise.

  Gregory David Roberts

  Taken, Names, Surprise

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• It's forgiveness that makes us what we are. Without forgiveness, our species would've annihilated itself in endless retributions. Without forgiveness, there would be no history. Without that hope, there would be no art, for every work of art is in some way an act of forgiveness. Without that dream, there would be no love, for every act of love is in some way a promise to forgive. We live on because we can love, and we love because we can forgive.

  Gregory David Roberts

  Dream, Art, Love Is

  Gregory David Roberts (2004). “Shantaram: A Novel”, p.327, Macmillan

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• It isn't a secret, unless keeping it hurts.

  Gregory David Roberts

  Hurt, Secret, It Hurts

  Gregory David Roberts (2004). “Shantaram: A Novel”, p.402, Macmillan

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• Indians are the Italians of Asia and vice versa. Every man in both countries is a singer when he is happy, and every woman is a dancer when she walks to the shop at the corner. For them, food is the music inside the body and music is the food inside the heart. Amore or Pyar makes every man a poet, a princess of peasant girl if only for second eyes of man and woman meets.

  Gregory David Roberts

  Girl, Country, Princess

  "Shantaram". Book by Gregory David Roberts, 2003.

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• I think the future is like anything else that's important. It has to be earned. If we don't earn it, we don't have a future at all. And if we don't earn it, we don't deserve it, we have to live in the present, more or less forever. Or worse, we have to live in the past. I think that's probably what love is - a way of earning the future.

  Gregory David Roberts

  Past, Love Is, Thinking

  Gregory David Roberts (2004). “Shantaram: A Novel”, p.85, Macmillan

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• Nothing in the world is so soft and pleasing to the touch, as the skin of a woman's thigh. No flower, feather or fabric, can match that velvet whisper of flesh. No matter how unequal they may be in any other ways, all women, old and young, fat and thin, beautiful and ugly, have that perfection. It's a great part of the reason why men hunger to possess women, and so often convince themselves that they do possess them: the thigh, that touch.

  Gregory David Roberts

  Beautiful, Flower, Men

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