shantaram - Quotes

People always hurt us with their trust. The surest way to hurt someone you like is to put all your trust in him.

There is 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 the plan; when you give yourself, completely to the golden fate filled moment.

A man can make his way in city with his heart and his soul crushed within a clenched fist; but to live in a village, he has to unfurl his heart and his soul in his eyes.

When you are running in life - you often love more people than you trust and when you aare safe in life - exactly the opposite is true.

"Don't you have any advice for me?"
"no", . . "I'd only give you advice if I didn't care what happens to you".

Waiting for nothing; that is what kills the heart of a man.

If fate doesn't make you laugh, then you just don't get the joke.

The worst thing about corruption as a system of governance, is that it works so well.

There is no act of faith more beautiful than the generosity of the very poor.

In this life, we do what we can to improve ourselves.

These people are dying and they steal life for themselves and then they sell life to others who are dying.

Trouble is the only property that poor fellows are allowed to own.

Heaven – a place where everybody is happy because nobody loves anybody else, ever.

we know who we are and we define what we are by references to the people we love and our reasons for loving them.


 Hero curse - certain men are cursed with qualities – such as great courage, that makes them commit desperate acts. – that thing that compels them to lead other men to bloodshed and chaos.

Happiness is a myth. It was invented to make us buy things.

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

Shame gives exultation its purpose and exultation gives shame its reward.

What characterizes the human race more, cruelty or the capacity to feel shame for it?

Its forgiveness what makes us what we are.

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

I smoked in those days because, like everyone else in the world who smokes, I wanted to die at least as much as I wanted live.

Nothing grieves more deeply or pathetically than one half of a great love that isn’t meant to be.

Every faith requires one to accept some compromise..!

The contours of all our virtues are shaped by adversity.

One of the ironies of courage and the reason why we prize it so highly, is that we find it easier to be brave for someone else than we do for ourselves alone..

Mistakes are like bad loves. The more you learn from them; the more you wish they’d never happened.

Prisons are temples where devils learn to prey.

Every virtuous act has some dark secret in its heart and every risk we take contains a mystery that can’t be solved.

Cruel laughter is the way cowards cry when they not alone and causing pain is how they grieve.

Despotism despises nothing so much as righteousness in its victims.

Men reveal what they think when they look away and what they feel when they hesitate. With women it’s the other way around.

Indian actors are the greatest in the world because Indian people know how to shout with their eyes.

He would be a fine man – the kind of man I once had tried and failed to be.

You are not a man until you give your love, truly and feely to a child.
And you are not a good man until you earn the love truly and freely, of a child in return.

News tells you what people did. Gossip tells you how much they enjoyed it.

A king is a bad enemy, a worse friend and a fatal family relation.

Some of the worst things were caused by people who tried to change things.

Depression only happens to people who don’t know how to be sad.

Honesty and loyalty can be tested. Love cannot be tested. Love goes on forever, once it begins, eve if we come to hate the one we love. Love goes on forever because love is born in the part of us that does die.

The smile was warm, but still wounded by his mother’s death. There was hollowness in his eyes; a ‘black hole’ of shocked grieving that swallowed all the questions and released no answers.

We can deny the past, but we cant escape its torment because the past is a speaking shadow that keeps pace with truth of what we are, step by step, until we die.

Each dead man is a temple in ruins.

The fully mature man / woman have about two seconds left to live.

Just nod your head, just nod your head, that’s all you have to do, and it’ll all be over.
 
If we all learned what we should learn, the first time around, we don’t need to love at all.

You can never tell what people have inside them until you start taking it away, one hope at a time.

Sometimes we love with nothing more than hope. Sometimes we cry with everything except tears. In the end that’s all there is; love and its duty. Sorrow and its truth. In the end that’s all we have- to hold on tight until the dawn.