Quotes from Ruskin Bond

Before 1900, the traveller to Mussoorie took a tonga from Saharanpur to Dehradun

Friendship is all about doing things together.

Those were the days of simple living. You don't see two-rupee notes any more. You don't see walking sticks either. Hardly anyone walks.

Along its banks, for hundreds of miles, lived millions of people, and Sita was only one small girl among them, and no one had ever heard of her, no one knew her—except for the old man, the boy and the river.

The skin cannot change the eyes; the eyes are the true reflection of a man's age and sensibilities; even a blind man has hidden eyes.

Vishal was well ahead of his time. Only the other day I read in one of our papers that elephant dung could be converted into good quality paper. Perhaps they'll use it to make bank notes. Reserve Bank, please note.   ?

That sad word love,' she said, and became pensive and silent.

Rare books can be seen in Roorkee, in the University's old library. Here, not many years ago, a First Folio Shakespeare turned up and was celebrated in the Indian Press as a priceless discovery. Perhaps it's still there. Also

Must everything have a purpose? Must a star have a purpose? Must a pretty sparkler have a purpose other than to emit light? Must a beautiful stone have a purpose?

The slender maindenhair fern grows firm on a rock While all around her the water swirls and chatters And then disappears in a rush Down to the bottom of the hill When I'm surrounded by troubled water, Lord, Let me find within a rock to cling to, And give me the quiet patience of the maidenhair Who has learned to live with the rock

The first condition of happiness is that a man must find joy in his work. Unless the work brings joy, the tedium of an aimless life can be soul-destroying.

We said goodbye. 'Remember this day, Ruskin,' said my father. He patted me gently on the head and walked away. I never saw him again. Three months later I heard that he had passed away in the military hospital in Calcutta. I dream of him sometimes, and in my dream he is always the same, caring for me and leading me by the hand along old familiar roads.

I have difficulty in doing justice to momentous events, the wars of nations, the politics of power; I am more at ease with the dew of the morning, the sensuous delights of the day, the silent blessings of the night, the joys and sorrows of children, the strivings of ordinary folk, and of course, the ridiculous situations in which we sometimes find ourselves.

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.

We cannot prevent sorrow and pain and tragedy. And yet, when we look around us, we find that the majority of people are actually enjoying life!

Beware of nature's show-offs: the banded krait, the scarlet scorpion, the beautiful belladonna, the ink-squirting octopus. Even so, history shows human beings to be the most dangerous of nature's show-offs. Inimical to each other, given over to greed and insatiable appetites. Nature strikes when roused; man, out of habit and a perverse nature.

think a person who has a subdued settled despair in his mind would all of a sudden feel a kind of bounding and exalting cheerfulness which will be imparted to his frame by the atmosphere of Duiri Tal.   This

Odd, how some little incident, some snatch of conversation comes back to one again and again in the most unlikely places.

True, Nandprayag has some affinity with parts of the Doon valley before it was submerged by a tidal wave of humanity. But in the Doon there is no great river running past your garden. Here there are two, and they are also part of this feeling of belonging. Perhaps in some former life I did come this way, or maybe I dreamed about living here. Who knows? Anyway, mysteries are more interesting than certainties.

Many folk's troubles would be less Could they be brought to understand That oft they cause their own distress, And hold its cure in their own hand. ~ Snippet from The Faith Cure by A.G. SHIRREFF

But being alone as a matter of choice is one of life's pleasures.

There is no moral to the story, any more than there is a moral to life. We cannot foresee when a bolt from the blue will put an end to the best-laid plans of mice and men.

How can we be afraid of those we love? It was a question that puzzled me then, and puzzles me still.

It's funny how some miles seem longer than others. It depends on what you are thinking about, I suppose. What you are thinking and what I am thinking. If our thoughts agree, the miles are not so long. We get on better when we are thinking together than when we are talking together.