Abraham Eraly > Quotes

“If a holy man eats half his loaf, he will give the other half to a beggar. But if a king conquers all the world, he will still seek another world to conquer. —SAADI, PERSIAN POET”
― Abraham Eraly, The Age of Wrath: A History of the Delhi Sultanate

“Nearly anything that can be said about Hinduism can be contradicted by something else that is equally true about it, and nothing whatever that is said about it can be entirely true or entirely false”
― Abraham Eraly, The First Spring Part 2: Culture in the Golden Age of India

“a saint with the heart of a devil, or a fiend with the soul of a saint.”
― Abraham Eraly, The Age of Wrath: A History of the Delhi Sultanate

“There is something very wrong with a people who consider that the greatest that would ever be has already been, and that the best they can do is to duplicate the past.”
― Abraham Eraly, The Mughal Throne

“if he conquers, he obtains power and good fortune. If he perishes, he obtains paradise and bliss.’ The outcome of the battle therefore did not matter much to him.”
― Abraham Eraly, The Age of Wrath: A History of the Delhi Sultanate

“Classical Sanskrit prose writers made very long sentences like this: "Lost in the forest and in thought, bent upon death and at the root of a tree, fallen upon calamity and her nurse's bosom, parted from her husband and happiness, burnt with the fierce sunshine and the woes of widowhood, her mouth closed with silence as well as by her hand, held fast by her companions as well as by grief, I saw her with her kindred and her graces all gone, her ears and her soul left bare, her ornaments and her aims abandoned, her bracelets and her hopes broken, her companions and the needle-like grass-spears clinging round her feet, her eyes and her beloved fixed within her bosom, her sighs and her hair long, her limbs and her merits exhausted, her aged attendants and her streams of tears falling down at her feet...." and it goes on.”
― Abraham Eraly, The First Spring Part 2: Culture in the Golden Age of India

“What India expected of its artists was craft skill, not creativity; conformity to tradition, not originality”
― Abraham Eraly, The First Spring Part 2: Culture in the Golden Age of India

“The pervasive attitude of fatalism among Indians of all classes was yet another factor affecting the spirit of Indian armies—victory and defeat were not in their hands, they believed; whatever was destined to happen would happen. This”
― Abraham Eraly, The Age of Wrath: A History of the Delhi Sultanate

“In the Buddhist view, the king served the people; in the Hindu view, the people served the king. However,”
― Abraham Eraly, The First Spring Part 1: Life in the Golden Age of India

“From Delhi to Palam Is the realm of Shah Alam.”
― Abraham Eraly, The Age of Wrath: A History of the Delhi Sultanate

“He constructed a road from Gaur to the river Indus,” says Mushtaqui, but it is more likely that Sher Shah only repaired and realigned the road, for there had been a highway along that grid from ancient times.”
― Abraham Eraly, Emperors Of The Peacock Throne: The Saga of the Great Moghuls