Top 160 Ruskin Bond Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “The European languages have their strengths, but for the purposes of cursing out loud you can’t beat some of the Indian languages for range and originality.”

— Ruskin Bond

102. “Borrowed books and umbrellas are seldom returned.”

— Ruskin Bond

103. “I suppose Hinduism comes closest to being a nature religion. Rivers, rocks, trees, plants, animals and birds, all play their part, both in mythology and in everyday worship. This harmony is most evident in these remote places, where gods and mountains co-exist. Tungnath, as yet unspoilt by a materialistic society, exerts its magic on all who come here with open mind and heart.”

— Ruskin Bond

104. “Money often costs too much.’ – Ralph Waldo Emerson.”

— Ruskin Bond

105. “The human voice often shatters the beauty of the most tender passions; and when we left Simla next day, and Maureen and Sunil used all the stock cliches to express their love, I was a little disappointed. But the poetry of life was in their bodies, not in their tongues.”

— Ruskin Bond

106. “No one rules the world forever, the gods grow jealous. If someone is constantly successful or too powerful – be it Alexander or Napolean or Hitler – the gods will eventually destroy him.”

— Ruskin Bond

107. “And when the rains were over and it was October and the birds were in song again, I could lie in the sun on sweet-smelling grass and gaze up through a pattern of oak leaves into a blind-blue heaven. And I would thank my God for leaves and grass and the smell of things, the smell of mint and myrtle and bruised clover, and the touch of things, the touch of grass and air and sky, the touch of the sky’s blueness.”

— Ruskin Bond

108. “You do not retreat from a road-block; you make your way around it, or look for another route to where you are going. And you learn to zigzag... Take a different route, albeit a longer one.”

— Ruskin Bond

109. “On the open road we are all brothers.”

— Ruskin Bond

110. “The adventure is not in getting somewhere, it’s the on-the-way experience. It is not the expected; it’s the surprise. Not the fulfilment of prophecy, but the providence of something better than that prophesied.”

— Ruskin Bond

111. “Sometimes the weak will last for years, while the strong will suddenly collapse and die.”

— Ruskin Bond

112. “The sunlight, penetrating the gaps in the tall trees, plays chess on the gravestones, shifting slowly and thoughtfully across the worn old stones. The wind, like a hundred violins, plays perpetually in the topmost branches of the deodars.”

— Ruskin Bond

113. “I have made no attempt at chronology. My writing hasn’t changed much over the years. That’s because I haven’t changed. I am still the impractical dreamer that I was sixty years ago, when I decided that writing would be my vocation and my profession. I do not suffer from writer’s block. I have only to sit down at my desk for the words to come tumbling on to my writing pad. And if an ant moves across my desk, I shall record its transit.”

— Ruskin Bond

114. “Typewriters and computers were not designed with steep mountain slopes in mind. On one occasion last autumn I did carry my typewriter into the garden, and I am still trying to extricate a couple of acorns from under the keys, while the roller seems permanently stained from some fine yellow pollen dust from the deodar trees. But armed with pencils and paper, I can lie on the grass and write for hours. Provided there are a couple of cheese-and-tomato sandwiches within easy reach.”

— Ruskin Bond

115. “For better or worse, we are all shaped by our parents.”

— Ruskin Bond

116. “I mostly write short stories. They are best written in a continuous creative process. You have a feel of immediacy.”

— Ruskin Bond

117. “Botanists have done their best to intimidate and confuse the nature lover. But we should not allow ourselves to be discouraged; we have as much right to the enjoyment of wild flowers as they. So I will disregard the botanist and I will go looking for the pretty flower that I have named Merry Heart. It is always nodding and dancing in the breeze. It is a happy flower, deserving of a happy, light name.”

— Ruskin Bond

118. “I was nostalgic even as a young man. Preferred listening to Opera not Bing Crossby.”

— Ruskin Bond

119. “When the moon is up, the night has its magic.”

— Ruskin Bond

120. “It wouldn’t be much fun living on a planet where grass could not grow.”

— Ruskin Bond

121. “When you write a novel you have to live with the characters for a long time. So I prefer short stories. I never wrote anything more than 250 pages.”

— Ruskin Bond

122. “When I’m writing there’s nobody watching me. Today, it’s hard to find a profession where you’re not being watched!”

— Ruskin Bond

123. “I believe that mountains do affect one’s personality, if one can remain among them long enough; and if Sunil had grown up in the hills instead of in a refugee township, I have no doubt he would have been a completely different person.”

— Ruskin Bond

124. “It is no use getting upset about delays in India; they come with unfailing punctuality.”

— Ruskin Bond

125. “So on we tramped, three small dots on a big mountain, mere specks, beings of no importance. In creating this world, God showed that he was a great mathematician; but in creating man, he got his algebra wrong. Puffed up with self-importance, we are in fact the most dispensable of all his creatures.”

— Ruskin Bond

126. “I had always considered it an admirable thing to break away from security and respectability. Of course, it is easier for a man to do this. A man can look after himself, he can do without neighbours and the approval of the local society. A woman, I reasoned, would do anything for love provided it was not at the price of security; for a woman loves security as much as a man loves independence.”

— Ruskin Bond

127. “Crows are the world’s great survivors. They are capable of living at any height and in any climate; as much at home in the back streets of Delhi as on the heights of Tungnath. Another.”

— Ruskin Bond

128. “It is supposed to be in very bad taste to discuss a person behind his back; and to discuss a dead person behind his back is most unfair, for he cannot even retaliate.”

— Ruskin Bond

129. “In times of crisis, it’s wonderful what the imagination will do.”

— Ruskin Bond

130. “Many people – car drivers anyway – think I’m a little eccentric. So be it. I probably am eccentric! But having come to the Himalayan foothills forty years ago in order to enjoy walking among them, I am not about to stop now, just because everyone else has stopped walking. The hills are durable in their attractions, and my legs have proved durable too, so why should we not continue together as before?”

— Ruskin Bond

131. “I watched a lot of movies. I was deeply influenced by movies.”

— Ruskin Bond

132. “Eighteen, and in control of my own destiny. For that man is strongest who stands alone.”

— Ruskin Bond

133. “All of us need just one good accomplishment in order to get by. Obviously he can’t spend the rest of his life climbing trees, but it’s the agility and enterprise involved in the act that will make him a survivor. Enough.”

— Ruskin Bond

134. “Trees make you feel younger. And the older the tree, the younger you feel. Whenever.”

— Ruskin Bond

135. “When you are old and grey and full of sleep’, it is good to have someone to lean on from time to time, and in that respect this agnostic has been blessed by the gods. I still value my solitude, but it is also nice to have someone tucking me into bed at night.”

— Ruskin Bond

136. “Is this what it feels to be God?”

— Ruskin Bond

137. “Every other man is a piece of myself, for I am a part of mankind.”

— Ruskin Bond

138. “Listen to the night wind in the trees, Listen to the summer grass singing; Listen to the time that’s tripping by, And the dawn dew falling. Listen to the moon as it climbs the sky, Listen to the pebbles humming; Listen to the mist in the trembling leaves, And the silence calling.”

— Ruskin Bond

139. “Some memories are best left untouched.”

— Ruskin Bond

140. “The world might be more beautiful without the human presence; but then, who would appreciate it?”

— Ruskin Bond

141. “The Land of Regrets, someone had called India; but for me it was a land of acceptances.”

— Ruskin Bond

142. “When it comes to loving and living and dying, there is no such thing as being modern and fashionable. Some things will never change. For it isn’t time that’s passing by, my friend; it is you and I.”

— Ruskin Bond

143. “Nothing is insignificant; nothing is without consequence in the intricate web of life.”

— Ruskin Bond

144. “I decided that one day I would have to break journey there, spend a day in the town, make inquiries, and find the girl who had stolen my heart with nothing but a look from her dark, impatient eyes.”

— Ruskin Bond

145. “And the last puff of the day-wind brought from the unseen villages the scent of damp wood-smoke, hot cakes, dripping undergrowth, and rotting pine-cones. That is the true smell of the Himalayas, and if once it creeps into the blood of a man, that man will at the last, forgetting all else, return to the hills to die. – Rudyard Kipling.”

— Ruskin Bond

146. “After all, most of living has to happen in the mind.”

— Ruskin Bond

147. “If, by telling a lie, one can make someone happy, why not tell the damn lie?”

— Ruskin Bond

148. “How sweet it is to do nothing, and afterwards to rest!”

— Ruskin Bond

149. “I was alone. Alone with the wind and the sky.”

— Ruskin Bond

150. “We don’t have to circle the world in order to find beauty and fulfilment. After all, most of living has to happen in the mind. And, to quote one anonymous sage from my trivet, “The world is only the size of each man’s head.”

— Ruskin Bond