Top 40 R.K. Narayan Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “You become writer by writing. It is a yoga.”

— R.K. Narayan

2. “A profound unmitigated loneliness is the only truth of life.”

— R.K. Narayan

3. “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

4. “This is my child. I planted it. I saw it grow. I loved it. Don’t cut it down...”

— R.K. Narayan

5. “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

6. “We always question the bonafides of the man who tells us unpleasant facts.”

— R.K. Narayan

7. “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

8. “Death and its associates, after the initial shock, produce callousness.”

— R.K. Narayan

9. “Past is gone, present is going, and tomorrow is day after tomorrow’s yesterday. So why worry about anything? God is in all this.”

— R.K. Narayan

10. “There are no more surprises and shocks in life, so that I watch the flame without agitation. For me the greatest reality is this and nothing else... Nothing else will worry or interest me in life hereafter.”

— R.K. Narayan

11. “Words have a knack of breeding more words, whereas laughter, a deafening, roaring laughter, has the knack of swallowing everything up.”

— R.K. Narayan

12. “Every creature is born with a potential store of violence.”

— R.K. Narayan

13. “Every minute becomes a yesterday and is lost forever.”

— R.K. Narayan

14. “How can two living entities possessing intelligence and judgement ever be tied together for a lifetime?”

— R.K. Narayan

15. “But you are not my wife. You are a woman who will go to bed with anyone who flatters your antics. That’s.”

— R.K. Narayan

16. “But it was like hiding a corpse. I’ve come to the conclusion that nothing in this world can be hidden or suppressed. All such attempts are like holding an umbrella to conceal the sun.”

— R.K. Narayan

17. “Travelers are an enthusiastic lot. They do not mind any inconvenience as long as they have something to see.”

— R.K. Narayan

18. “It seems to me that we generally do not have a correct measure of our own wisdom.”

— R.K. Narayan

19. “Certain things acquired an evil complexion if phrased, but remained harmless in the mind.”

— R.K. Narayan

20. “Staring is half the victory in love.”

— R.K. Narayan

21. “The gods grow jealous of too much contentment anywhere, and they show their displeasure all of a sudden.”

— R.K. Narayan

22. “It is stimulating to live in a society that is not standardized or mechanized, and is free from monotony.”

— R.K. Narayan

23. “The next three days I was very busy. My table was placed in the front room of the new house. All my papers and books were arranged neatly. My clothes hung on a peg. The rest of the house was swept and cleaned.”

— R.K. Narayan

24. “Rama glanced at her whenever a beautiful object caught his eye. Every tint of the sky, every shape of a flower or bud, every elegant form of a creeper reminded him of some aspect or other of Sita’s person.”

— R.K. Narayan

25. “In a few months I was a seasoned guide. I had viewed myself as an amateur guide and a professional shopman, but now gradually I began to think of myself as a part-time shop-keeper and a full-time tourist guide.”

— R.K. Narayan

26. “Even when you realize that the one before you is an enemy and must be treated sternly, do not hurt with words.”

— R.K. Narayan

27. “What can we do with a creature who returns to his doom with such a free heart?”

— R.K. Narayan

28. “We are a flawed, weak species, he gently reminds us in these pages, focusing his attention, clearly and without sentiment, on those who will stoop low, those who will stop at nothing. What makes us care for such frequently pathetic characters is that they, like most of the rest of us, are strivers, driven by hopes for a slightly better life.”

— R.K. Narayan

29. “The sun set beyond thesea, so says the poet – and when a poet mentions a sea, we have to accept it; no harm in letting a poet describe his vision, no need to question his geography.”

— R.K. Narayan

30. “Do you realize how few ever really understand how fortunate they are in their circumstances?”

— R.K. Narayan

31. “The compartment built to ‘seat 8 passengers; 4 British Troops, or 6 Indian Troops’ now carried only nine.”

— R.K. Narayan

32. “A man who preferred to dress like a permanent tourist was just what a guide passionately looked for all his life. You may want to ask why I became a guide or when. I was a guide for the same reason as someone else is a signaler, porter, or guard. It is fated thus. Don’t laugh at my railway associations. The railways got into my blood very early in life. Engines with their tremendous clanging.”

— R.K. Narayan

33. “Those who believe in destiny and those who drift without such beliefs are alike the worst among men; only those who act and perform what is right for their station in life are worthy of praise. Man.”

— R.K. Narayan

34. “In a world where we are accustomed to rivalries over possession, authority, and borders, and people clashing over the issue, “Ours,” or “Mine, not yours,” it is rather strange to find two people debating whose the kingdom is not, and asserting: “Yours, not mine.”

— R.K. Narayan

35. “He then explained his new philosophy, which followed the devastating discovery that Love and Friendship were the veriest illusions. He explained that people married because their sexual appetite had to be satisfied and there must be somebody to manage the house. There was nothing deeper than that in any man and woman relationship.”

— R.K. Narayan

36. “Knowledge, like food, must be taken within limits. You must know only as much as you need, and not more.”

— R.K. Narayan

37. “By the twelfth day of his fast, Raju himself has become a tourist attraction. Before an enormous crowd and an American television crew, the starving man is helped down to the drought-stricken river to pray:.”

— R.K. Narayan

38. “But there is this peculiarity about heat: it appears to affect only those that think of it.”

— R.K. Narayan

39. “It’s often said that God made man in His own image, it’s also true that man makes God in his own image.”

— R.K. Narayan

40. “This work opens the eyes of the world blinded by ignorance. As the sun dispels darkness, so does Bharata by its exposition of religion, duty, action, contemplation, and so forth. As the full moon by shedding soft light helps the buds of the lotus to open, so this Purana by its exposition expands the human intellect. The lamp of history illumines the ‘whole mansion of the womb of Nature.’ – Vyasa.”

— R.K. Narayan

41. “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

42. “We stood at the window, gazing on a slender, red streak over the eastern rim of the earth. A cool breeze lapped our faces. The boundaries of our personalities suddenly dissolved. It was a moment of rare, immutable joy – a moment for which one feels grateful to Life and Death.”

— R.K. Narayan

43. “Swaminathan had never thought that this story contained a moral. But now he felt that it must have one since the question paper mentioned it.”

— R.K. Narayan

44. “When one is seized with a passion to understand one’s self, one has to leave behind all normal life and habitual modes of thought.”

— R.K. Narayan

45. “At this moment, let us not forget that my authority has been challenged not by a warrior but by a monkey!”

— R.K. Narayan

46. “If we do not accomplish it in time, what has begun with a monkey may not end with a monkey. Next even a swarm of mosquitoes may decide to challenge your authority.”

— R.K. Narayan

47. “Is there anyone who has conquered the gods and lived continuously in that victory? Sooner or later retribution has always come. Do not be contemptuous of men or monkeys.”

— R.K. Narayan