Charles Allen > Quotes

“Creativity is the essence of fencing.”
― Charles Allen

“You know what they say about consultants, don't you? They know all the moves in the Kama Sutra but don't know any women.”
― Charles Allen

“There is at least one important work to be done that will not be done unless you do it. ”
― Charles Allen

“No person ever really lives until he has found something worth dying for.”
― Charles Allen

“It is under Ashoka’s aegis that Indian civilisation, in the sense of a shared culture embracing everything from administration to art and architecture, makes a great leap forward, with tolerance as its watchword. One of his edicts is entirely devoted to this subject, with the great emperor under his regnal name of Piyadasi calling on his subjects to respect all religions. It ends with these words: Whoever praises his own religion, due to excessive devotion, and condemns others with the thought ‘Let me glorify my own religion’, only harms his own religion.”
― Charles Allen, Coromandel: A Personal History of South India

“Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not to their own facts”
― Charles Allen, Coromandel: A Personal History of South India

“However, the most striking evidence of Brahmanical hostility towards Buddhism comes in the form of silence: the way in which India’s Buddhist history, extending over large parts of the country and lasting for many centuries, was excised from the historical record.”
― Charles Allen, Ashoka: The Search for India's Lost Emperor

“who feared God, but not death … who thought none below him but the base and unjust, none above him but the wise and virtuous’.”
― Charles Allen, Ashoka: The Search for India's Lost Emperor

“This travelling was never about gaining merit or the absolution of sins. It was always the journey that mattered, and what these travels could tell me about the country and its history – a history so alluring, so epic as to keep drawing me back. There is so damn much of it, and so much still unexamined, still disputed, still buried and waiting to be brought back into the light.”
― Charles Allen, Coromandel: A Personal History of South India

“The purpose of the appeal was to open a subscription list by which signatories pledged themselves to support the cost of printing a limited edition, of which they themselves would be entitled to one or more copies, depending on the amount pledged. This was the usual means at the time [1836] of enabling the publication of an expensive book…”
― Charles Allen, The Prisoner of Kathmandu: Brian Hodgson in Nepal 1820-43

“The most spectacular example of continental drift and tectonic plate movement has to be the Indian Plate, a triangle of geomorphic crust which aeons ago broke away from the single supercontinent of Gondwanaland to drift north-eastwards across the globe. As it slid so it scraped over magmatic hotspots, releasing stupendous amounts of volcanic gases and lava – a catastrophic venting that may well have contributed towards the extinction of the greater dinosaurs but most certainly created the layers of thick lava topped by granite boulders that make up much of the triangular tableland known as the Indian Plate, which the Arya (of whom I have a lot more to say in a later chapter) named the Deccan (derived from the Sanskrit dakshina, ‘south country’).”
― Charles Allen, Coromandel: A Personal History of South India

“As they approached Dhauli the elephant refused to go forward; nothing that Mark or the mahout did could persuade her to cross the open ground in front of them. Only then did Mark learn that they had come to the Kalinga battlefield, on which hundreds of war elephants are said to have died.”
― Charles Allen, Coromandel: A Personal History of South India

“The role played by women in history is as underwritten in India as anywhere, so it is only right to end with a mention of another woman of Kerala whose part in its history has only recently been publicly recognised. Her name was Velathu Lakshmikutty and she died in 2013 at the fine old age of 102 (see page 297). In 1952 she organised and led a march by women against the Manimalarkavu temple in Velur, Cochin, which – unbelievable as it seems to us today – was still requiring avarna women like herself to attend the Manimalarkavu pooram spring festival with breasts exposed. The protest that she led finally brought that particularly shaming form of caste discrimination to an end, although it serves as a reminder that the oppression of the powerless by the powerful is far from being a thing of the past.”
― Charles Allen, Coromandel: A Personal History of South India

“My only intention is that they live without fear of me, that they may trust me and that I may give them happiness, not sorrow. Furthermore, they should understand that the king will forgive those who can be forgiven, and that he wishes them to practise Dharma so that they can attain happiness in this world and the next. I am telling you this so that I may discharge the debts I owe, and that in instructing you, you may know that my vow and my promise will not be broken … Assure them [the people of the unconquered territories] that: ‘The king is like a father. He feels towards us as he feels towards himself. We are to him like his own children.”
― Charles Allen, Ashoka: The Search for India's Lost Emperor

“Some people seem to have such a passion for righteousness that they have no room left for compassion for those who have failed.”
― Charles Allen

“secrets”
― Charles Allen, David Crockett, Scout