India/Quotes

If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most fully developed some of its choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered on the greatest problems of life, and has found solutions, I should point to India.

—Max Mueller

There does not exist a history of ancient India. Their books contain no historical data whatever, except for a few religious books in which historical information is buried under a heap of parables and folk-lore, and their buildings and other monuments also do nothing to fill the void for the oldest among them do not go beyond the third century B.C. To discover facts about India of the ancient times is as difficult a task as the discovery of the island of Atlantis, which, according to Plato, was destroyed due to the changes of the earth... The historical phase of India began with the Muslim invasion. Muslims were India's first historians.

—Les Civilisations de L'Inde, 1826

Me: You did just what he asked...

Desk Clerk: (looks up smiling slightly)

Me: You wrote it down in Hindi. The local language is Tamil... and what are his chances of finding a literate ‘auto’ driver out there, anyway?

Desk Clerk: (smiling broadly) You have been here before, sir!

—"Driving A Hard Bargain" on (The Customer is) Not Always Right