"India is not, as people keep calling it, an underdeveloped country, but rather, in the context of its history and cultural heritage, a highly developed one in an advanced state of decay."

"What is most important to me is Jawaharlal Nehru's idea of India, India as a pluralist society and polity, an idea which is central to India’s survival, which has held now in the four decades after his death and which is all the more in need of defending."

"The only possible idea of India is that of a nation greater than the sum of its parts."

""It was as if he had heard what I wanted," she said. But a skilled magician can do that, and it would be wrong to see Sai Baba as a conjurer. He has channeled the hopes and energies of his followers into constructive directions, both spiritual and philanthropic."

"I was not blinded by faith, but the encounter was indeed astonishing at several levels. In our private talk, Sai Baba uttered insights about my family and myself that he could not possibly have known....He waved his hand in the air and opened his palm. In it nestled a gold ring with nine embedded stones, a navratan. He slipped it on my finger, remarking, "See how well it fits. Even a goldsmith would have needed to measure your finger.""

"India shaped my mind, anchored my identity, influenced my beliefs, and made me who I am. ... India matters to me and I would like to matter to India."

"Pluralist India must, by definition, tolerate plural expressions of its many identities."

"We all have multiple identities in India; we are all minorities in India. Our heterogeneity is definitional."

"No Indian nationalist leader ever needed to say: We have created India; now all we need to do is to create Indians."

"I do not look to history to absolve my country of the need to do things right today. Rather I seek to understand the wrongs of yesterday, both to grasp what has brought us to our present reality and to understand the past for itself. The past is not necessarily a guide to the future, but it does partly help explain the present. One cannot, as I have written elsewhere, take revenge upon history; history is its own revenge."

"To speak of Hindu fundamentalism, is a contradiction in terms, since Hinduism is a religion without fundamentals. To be an Indian Hindu is to be part of an elusive dream all share, a dream that fills our minds with sounds, words, flavours from many sources that we cannot easily identify."

"Every Hindu may not be conscious of the finer points of his faith, but he has been raised in the tradition of its assumptions and doctrines, even when these have not been explained to him. His Hinduism may be a Hinduism of habit rather than a Hinduism of learning, but it is a lived Hinduism for all that."

"Shashi Tharoor will be just a puppet in the hand of Sonia Gandhi family, who will be the real driver."

"...It seems to me that this allegation should have been seriously investigated. And it is not too late. Because on such an important matter, the nation has every right to know what really happened..." He further said, "The matter is extremely serious. Our concern is that when the LoP points to something which is an allegation that has been in the public domain for some time and which featured in a book by the former IG of police, Mushrif, who said that the bullets found in Karkare's body could not have been fired by the Ajmal Kasab and that it could have been fired by a police revolver, it seems to me that this allegation should have been seriously investigated. And it is not too late. Because on such an important matter, the nation has every right to know what really happened...We are not saying that the allegation is definitely true. We are saying it should be investigated."

"No government has the right to inject religion into questions of citizenship. Citizenship is a privilege of people of all religions, all castes, all languages, if you're Indian."

"I don’t go by my caste, creed, or religion. My works speak for me."

"In India, history was pressed into the nation-building project. There was a desire to allay over some unpleasant details, the destruction of temples, some of the horrors that happened while stressing on the commonalities that also featured throughout the ages."

"Partition, split of the nationalist movement didn’t happen over ideology or geography. It happened on one key question – is religion the determinant of our nationhood."

"When you ask, rightly, why is today's Muslim feeling offended when Ghazni or Ghori are denounced, the answer is because it is instrumentalised to demonise them today."

"Secularism as principle and practice is in danger, but I do not see it falling anytime soon: India embodies tolerance and pluralism in its very essence, and I do not believe that forces of hatred can permanently overcome our fundamental secularism."

"Extra judicial killings are not acceptable in a society of law."

"If America is a melting pot, then to me India is a thali -- a collection of sumptuous dishes in different bowls. Each may not mix with the next, but they combine on your palate to produce a satisfying repast."

"If India had a Latin version of the American motto E Pluribus Unum, it would be E Pluribus Pluribum."

"Ultimately, what matters in determining the validity of a nation is the will of its inhabitants to live and strive together."

"In India we celebrate the commonality of major differences; we are a land of belonging rather than of blood."

"India imposes no procrustean exactions on its citizens: you can be many things and one thing."

"Our founding fathers wrote a constitution for a dream. We have given passports to their ideals."

"But no - what’s this? The branch on which he is sitting is weak. That is not all: wood-mice are gnawing away at it: before long they will eat through it and it will snap and fall. The branch sags down over a well. Aha! Escape! Perhaps our hero can swim ? But the well is dry and there are snakes writhing and hissing on its bed. As the branch bends lower, he perceives a solitary blade of grass on wall of well. On top of the blade of grass gleams a drop of honey. What is our hero to do? What action does our puranic man quintessential Indian, take in the situation? He bends with the branch and licks up the honey.... What did you expect? Some neat solution to the problem? The tiger changes its mind and goes away? Amitabh Bachchan leaps to the rescue? Don’t be silly. One strength of Indian mind is that it knows some problems cannot be resolved and it learns to make best of them. That is the Indian answer to the insuperable difficulty. One does not fight against that by which one is certain to be overwhelmed; but one finds the best way, for oneself, to live with it. This is our national aesthetic. Without it, india as we know it could not survive."

"Work! work! work! While the cock is crowing aloof! And work—work—work, Till the stars shine through the roof!"

"The things we liked most of course were the things that more or less selected or symbolized our own feelings of conditions and life in general. For example, I recall that we liked Thomas Hood's "The Sound of the ship" Now, nothing could come closer to the way we felt than that particular poem. We also read and managed an interest in that other one, "The Bridge of Sighs" also by Thomas Hood. Later, we found "The Masque of Anarchy" by Shelley, and of course in addition to that there were the Jewish poets, like Rosenfeld and Edelshtat. They were magnificent in their writing, in their poetry depicting the life of the people in the shop."

"'Tis strange how like a very dunce, Man, with his bumps upon his sconce, Has lived so long, and yet no knowledge he Has had, till lately, of Phrenology— A science that by simple dint of Head-combing he should find a hint of, When scratching o'er those little pole-hills The faculties throw up like mole hills."

"Each cloud-capt mountain is a holy altar; An organ breathes in every grove; And the full heart 's a Psalter, Rich in deep hymn of gratitude and love."

"No solemn sanctimonious face I pull, Nor think I'm pious when I'm only bilious; Nor study in my sanctum supercilious, To frame a Sabbath Bill or forge a Bull."

"Pity it is to slay the meanest thing."

"Ben Battle was a soldier bold, And used to war's alarms; But a cannon-ball took off his legs, So he laid down his arms."

"Peace and rest at length have come All the day's long toil is past, And each heart is whispering, "Home, Home at last.""

"A wife who preaches in her gown, And lectures in her night-dress."

"Boughs are daily rifled By the gusty thieves, And the book of Nature Getteth short of leaves."

"Another tumble! That's his precious nose!"

"How widely its agencies vary,— To save, to ruin, to curse, to bless,— As even its minted coins express, Now stamped with the image of Good Queen Bess, And now of a Bloody Mary."

"Spurned by the young, but hugged by the old To the very verge of the churchyard mould."

"Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold! Bright and yellow, hard and cold."

"Home-made dishes that drive one from home."

"There's a double beauty whenever a swan Swims on a lake with her double thereon."

"Oh would I were dead now, Or up in my bed now, To cover my head now, And have a good cry!"

"When he is forsaken, Withered and shaken, What can an old man do but die?"

"Thus she stood amid the stooks, Praising God with sweetest looks."