Quotes from Khushwant Singh

His mind was like the delicate spring of a watch, which quivers for several hours after it has been touched.

According to the Hindus, the Muslims were to blame. The fact is, both sides killed. Both shot and stabbed and speared and clubbed. Both tortured. Both raped.

When you have counted eighty years and more, Time and Fate will batter at your door; But if you should survive to be a hundred, Your life will be death to the very core.

Morality is a matter of money. Poor people cannot afford to have morals. So they have religion.

When you have counted eighty years and more, Time and Fate will batter at your door; But if you should survive to be a hundred, Your life will be death to the very core.

I discovered that a diplomat's life is largely entertaining and meeting people. At the end of the day there's nothing. So I gave up.

It was again to the Prophet Musa that Allah conveyed the essence of true religion. The Almighty said. 'I was sick, and you did not come to see me. I was hungry, and you did not give me food.' Musa asked 'My God, can you also be sick and hungry?' God replied 'My servant so-and-so was sick, and my servant so-and-so was hungry. If you had visited one and fed the other, you would have found me with them.

Nature provides that a man who slaves all day should spend the hours of the night in a palace full of houris whereas a king who wields the sceptre by day should have his sleep disturbed by nightmares of rebellion and assassination.

I realized that I belonged neither to the Hindus nor to the Mussalmans. How could I explain to my wife that while the Brahmins lived on offerings made to their gods, the Rajputs and the Jats had their lands, Aheers and the Gujars their cattle, the Banias their shops, all that the poor Kayasthas had were their brains and their reed pens! And the only people who could pay for their brains and their pens were the rulers who were Muslims!

India is constipated with a lot of humbug. Take modern Indian music of the films. It is all tango & rhumba or samba played on Hawaiian guitars, violins, accordions & clarinets. It is ugly. It must be scrapped like the rest.

little mother of ancient days: Thou hast cunningly dyed thy hair but consider That thy bent back will never be straight!

In the absence of men all women are chaste.

But if they asked me 'Abdullah when will you become a true Muslim?' I would reply 'Soon, if that be the will of God— Inshallah.' If anyone asked me whether we were Hindus or Mussalmans, we would reply we were both. Nizamuddin was our umbrella against the burning sun of Muslim bigotry and the downpour of Hindu contempt.

India is constipated with a lot of humbug. Take religion. For the Hindu, it means little besides caste and cow-protection. For the Muslim, circumcision and kosher meat. For the Sikh, long hair and hatred of the Muslim. For the Christian, Hinduism with a sola topee. For the Parsi, fire-worship and feeding vultures. Ethics, which should be the kernel of a religious code, has been carefully removed. Take

The eye hath ruined me,' the heart complained. 'The heart has lost me,' the eye replied. I know not which told the truth, which lied Between, the two, it was Meer who died.

Freedom is for the educated people who fought for it. We were slaves of the English, now we will be slaves of the educated Indians—or the Pakistanis.' Iqbal

In America, they make a lot of fuss over little things.

You have only one life to live. Live it to the full. Time flies as fast as a bird on the wing.

Not forever lasts the spring Nor ever blossom flowers. Not forever reigneth joy, Sets the sun on days of bliss, Friendships not forever last, They know not life, who know not this. 'They know not life, who know not this

Love is an elusive concept and means different things to different people.

His (Juggut Singh's) equation with authority was simple: he was on the other side. Personalities did not come into it. Subinspectors & policemen were people in khaki who frequently arrested him, always abused him, and sometimes beat him. Since they abused him and beat him without anger or hate, they were not human beings with names. They were only denominations one tried to get the better of. If one failed, it was just bad luck.

A Turk for toughness, for hands that never tire; An Indian for her rounded bosom bursting with milk; A Persian for her tight crotch and her coquetry; An Uzbeg to thrash as a lesson for the three.

The Muslims had become masters of Hindustan. They were quite willing to let us Hindus live our lives as we wanted to provided we recognized them as our rulers. But the Hindus were full of foolish pride. 'This is our country!' they said. 'We will drive out these cow-killers and destroyers of our temples.' They were especially contemptuous towards Hindus who had embraced Islam and treated them worse than untouchables.

And all the mumbo-jumbo of reincarnation. Man into ox into ape into beetle into eight million four hundred thousand kinds of animate things. Proof? We do not go in for such pedestrian pastimes as proof! That is Western. We are of the mysterious East. No proof, just faith. No reason, just faith.