Beyond idiom, however, the book is incorrigibly Western in being targeted for the contemporary Western mind. That being the author’s mind, he had no choice in the matter; but it must be accepted with the recognition that the book would have
...more
“Watching Jamila sometimes made me think the world was divided into three sorts of people: those who knew what they wanted to do; those (the unhappiest) who never knew what their purpose in life was; and those who found out later on. I was in the last category, I reckoned, which didn't stop me wishing I'd been born into the first.”
― The Buddha of Suburbia
― The Buddha of Suburbia
“There's really no such thing as the 'voiceless'. There are only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard.”
―
―
“A rich man who happens to be intellectually honest, if he is questioned about the improvement of working conditions, usually says something like this:
‘We know that poverty is unpleasant; in fact, since it is so remote, we rather enjoy harrowing ourselves with the thought of its unpleasantness. But don’t expect us to do anything about it. […] The present state of affairs suits us, and we are not going to take the risk of setting you free, even by an extra hour a day. So, dear brothers, since evidently you must sweat to pay for our trips to Italy, sweat and be damned to you”
― Down and Out in Paris and London & the Road to Wigan Pier
‘We know that poverty is unpleasant; in fact, since it is so remote, we rather enjoy harrowing ourselves with the thought of its unpleasantness. But don’t expect us to do anything about it. […] The present state of affairs suits us, and we are not going to take the risk of setting you free, even by an extra hour a day. So, dear brothers, since evidently you must sweat to pay for our trips to Italy, sweat and be damned to you”
― Down and Out in Paris and London & the Road to Wigan Pier
“The whites will never promote us,’ Dad said. ‘Not an Indian while there is a white man left on the earth. You don’t have to deal with them – they still think they have an Empire when they don’t have two pennies to rub together.”
― The Buddha of Suburbia
― The Buddha of Suburbia
“A slave, Marcus Cato said, should be working when he is not sleeping. It does not matter whether his work is needed or not, he must work, because work in itself is good – for slaves at least. This sentiment still survives, and it has piled up mountains of useless drudgery”
― Down and Out in Paris and London
― Down and Out in Paris and London
Rubaiat’s 2025 Year in Books
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