William Dalrymple > Quotes

“India has always had a strange way with her conquerors. In defeat, she beckons them in, then slowly seduces, assimilates and transforms them.”
― William Dalrymple, White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India

“Partition was a total catastrophe for Delhi,’ she said. ‘Those who were left behind are in misery. Those who were uprooted are in misery. The Peace of Delhi is gone. Now it is all gone.”
― William Dalrymple, City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi

“Whoever has built a new city in Delhi has always lost it: the Pandava brethren, Prithviraj Chauhan, Feroz Shah Tughluk, Shah Jehan ... They all built new cities and they all lost them. We were no exception.”
― William Dalrymple, City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi

“The histories of Islamic fundamentalism and European imperialism have very often been closely, and dangerously, intertwined. In a curious but very concrete way, the fundamentalists of both faiths have needed each other to reinforce each other’s prejudices and hatreds. The venom of one provides the lifeblood of the other.”
― William Dalrymple, The Last Mughal: The Fall of Delhi, 1857

“For two thousand years Jerusalem has brought out the least attractive qualities in every race that has lived there. The Holy City has had more atrocities committed in it, more consistently, than any other town in the world. Sacred to three religions, the city has witnessed the worst intolerance and self-righteousness of all of them.”
― William Dalrymple, In Xanadu

“On the road, as in many other aspects of Indian life, Might is Right.”
― William Dalrymple, City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi

“Mr William, he said, in my life six times have I crashed, and on not one occasion have I ever been killed.( Bevinda Singh taxi driver from City of Djinns”
― William Dalrymple

“One day Lal shahbaz was wandering in the desert with his friend Sheikh Bhaa ud-Din Zakariya. It was winter, and evening time, so they began to build a fire to keep warm. They found some wood, but then they realised they had no fire. So Baha ud- Din suggested that Lal Shahbaz turn himself into a falcon and get fire from hell. Off he flew, but an hour later he came back empty handed. "There is no fire in hell," he reported. "Everyone who goes there brings their own fire, and their own pain, from this world.”
― William Dalrymple, Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India

“Such are the humiliations of the travel writer in the late 20th century: go to the ends of the earth to search for the most exotic heretics in the world, and you will find that they have cornered the kebab business at the end of your street in London.”
― William Dalrymple, From the Holy Mountain: A Journey Among the Christians of the Middle East

“But on balance I think you must never take land away from a people. A people’s land has a mystique. You can go and possibly order them about for a bit, perhaps introduce some new ideas, build a few good buildings, but then in the end you must go away and die in Cheltenham.’ Iris sighed. ‘And that, of course, is exactly what we did.”
― William Dalrymple, City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi

“Corporations have neither bodies to be punished, nor souls to be condemned, they therefore do as they like. Edward, First Baron Thurlow”
― William Dalrymple, The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire

“For the British after 1857, the Indian Muslim became an almost subhuman creature, to be classified in unembarrassedly racist imperial literature alongside such other despised and subject specimens, such as Irish Catholics or ‘the Wandering Jew’.”
― William Dalrymple, The Last Mughal: The Fall of Delhi, 1857

“Dr Jaffery said that very few people in Delhi now wanted to study classical Persian, the language which, like French in Imperial Russia, had for centuries been the first tongue of every educated Delhi-wallah. 'No one has any interest in the classics today,' he said. 'If they read at all, they read trash from America. They have no idea what they are missing. The jackal thinks he has feasted on the buffalo when in fact he has just eaten the eyes, entrails and testicles rejected by the lion.”
― William Dalrymple, City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi

“So vast is India, and so uniquely resilient and deeply rooted are her intertwined social and religious institutions, that all foreign intruders are sooner or later either shaken off or absorbed.”
― William Dalrymple, White Mughals

“There is no fire in hell,” he reported. “Everyone who goes there brings their own fire, and their own pain, from this world.”
― William Dalrymple, Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India

“because we have two legs and travelling on foot is the right speed for human beings. Walking sorts out your problems and anxieties, and calms your worries. Living from day to day, from inspiration to inspiration, much of what I have learned as a Jain has come from wandering. Sometimes, even my dreams are of walking.”
― William Dalrymple, Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India

“Across the broken apses and shattered naves of a hundred ruined Byzantine churches, the same smooth, cold, neo-classical faces of the saints and apostles stare down like a gallery of deaf mutes; and through this thundering silence the everyday reality of life in the Byzantine provinces remains persistently difficult to visualise. The sacred and aristocratic nature of Byzantine art means that we have very little idea of what the early Byzantine peasant or shopkeeper looked like; we have even less idea of what he thought, what he longed for, what he loved or what he hated.
Yet through the pages of The Spiritual Meadow one can come closer to the ordinary Byzantine than is possible through virtually any other single source.

Dalrymple, William (2012-06-21). From the Holy Mountain: A Journey in the Shadow of Byzantium (Text Only) (Kindle Location 248). HarperCollins Publishers. Kindle Edition.”
― William Dalrymple, From the Holy Mountain: A Journey Among the Christians of the Middle East

“India has always had a strange way with her conquerors. In defeat, she beckons them in, then slowly seduces, assimilates and transforms them. Over the centuries, many powers have defeated Indian armies; but none has ever proved immune to this capacity of the subcontinent to somehow reverse the current of colonisation, and to mould those who attempt to subjugate her. So vast is India, and so uniquely resilient and deeply rooted are her intertwined social and religious institutions, that all foreign intruders are sooner or later either shaken off or absorbed.”
― William Dalrymple, White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India

“For all its faults we love this city.’ Then, after a pause, she added: ‘After all, we built it.”
― William Dalrymple, City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi

“the Afghans were perceived as mere pawns on the chessboard of western diplomacy, to be engaged or sacrificed at will. It was a precedent that was to be followed many other times, by several different powers, over the years and decades to come; and each time the Afghans would show themselves capable of defending their inhospitable terrain far more effectively than any of their would-be manipulators could possibly have suspected. It”
― William Dalrymple, Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan, 1839-42

“Given the somewhat dubious and sectarian reputation of madrasas today, it is worth remembering that many of the most brilliant Hindu thinkers, including, for example, the great reformer Ram Mohan Roy (1772–1833), were the products of madrasa educations.”
― William Dalrymple, The Last Mughal: The Fall of Delhi, 1857

“The water moves on, a little faster than before, yet still the great river flows. It is as fluid and unpredictable in its moods as it has ever been, but it meanders within familiar banks.”
― William Dalrymple, Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India

“During our first month in the flat, however, Mr Puri was on his best behaviour. Apart from twice proposing marriage to my wife, he behaved with perfect decorum.”
― William Dalrymple, City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi

“The outbreak revealed the surprising degree to which the Mughal court was still regarded across northern India not as some sort of foreign Muslim imposition – as some, especially on the Hindu right wing, look upon the Mughals today – but instead as the principal source of political legitimacy, and therefore the natural centre of resistance against British colonial rule.”
― William Dalrymple, The Last Mughal: The Fall of Delhi, 1857

“The Bengali poet Ganga Ram in his Maharashta Purana gave a fuller picture of the terror they inspired. ‘The people on earth were filled with sin,’ he wrote, ‘and there was no worship of Rama and Krishna. Day and night people took their pleasure with the wives of others.’ Finally, he wrote, Shiva ordered Nandi to enter the body of the Maratha king Shahu. ‘Let him send his agents, that sinners and evil doers be punished.’29 Soon after: The Bargis [Marathas] began to plunder the villages and all the people fled in terror. Brahmin pandits fled, taking with them loads of manuscripts; goldsmiths fled with the scales and weights; and fishermen with their nets and lines – all fled. The people fled in all directions; who could count their numbers? All who lived in villages fled when they heard the name of the Bargis. Ladies of good family, who had never before set a foot on a road fled from the Bargis with baskets on their heads. And land owning Rajputs, who had gained their wealth with the sword, threw down their swords and fled. And sadhus and monks fled, riding on litters, their bearers carrying their baggage on their shoulders; and many farmers fled, their seed for next year’s crops on the backs of their bullocks, and ploughs on their shoulders. And pregnant women, all but unable to walk, began their labour on the road and were delivered there. There were some people who stood in the road and asked of all who passed where the Bargis were. Everyone replied – I have not seen them with my own eyes. But seeing everyone flees, I flee also. Then suddenly the Bargis swept down with a great shout and surrounded the people in their fields. They snatched away gold and silver, rejecting everything else. Of some people they cut off the hand, of some the nose and ears; some they killed outright. They dragged away the most beautiful women, who tried to flee, and tied ropes to their fingers and necks. When one had finished with a woman, another took her, while the raped women screamed for help. The Bargis after committing all foul, sinful and bestial acts, let these women go.”
― William Dalrymple, The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company

“It was as if this early promiscuous mingling of races and ideas, modes of dress and ways of living, was something that was on no one’s agenda and suited nobody’s version of events. All sides seemed, for different reasons, to be slightly embarrassed by this moment of crossover, which they preferred to pretend had never happened. It is, after all, always easier to see things in black and white.”
― William Dalrymple, White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India

“Ultimately it was the East India Company, not the Marathas or the Sultans of Mysore, that the financiers across India decided to back.”
― William Dalrymple, The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire

“This? I thought, after a twenty-year civil war: This? Armageddon I expected; but Armani I did not.”
― William Dalrymple, From The Holy Mountain: A Journey in the Shadow of Byzantium

“To the sick man sweet water tastes bitter in the mouth.”
― William Dalrymple, City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi

“He disdains such cowardly acts as looking in wing mirrors or using his indicators.”
― William Dalrymple, City Of Djinns: A Year In Delhi