Top 161 Quotes & Sayings by Gregory David Roberts - Page 3

A lot of bad stuff in the world wasn’t really that bad until someone tried to change it.

but there's no nation uncorrupted. there's no system that's immune to the misuse of money.

We have a saying in Marseilles: a man in no hurry gets nowhere fast. I have been in no hurry for eight years.

at first, when we truly love someone, our greatest fear is that the loved one will stop loving us. what we should fear and dread, of course, is that we wont stop loving them, even after they are dead and gone. for i still love you with the whole of my heart. i still love you. and sometimes, my friend, the love that i have and cant give to you, crushed the breast from my chest. soemtimes, even now, my heart is drowning in a sorrow that has no stars without you, and no laughter, and no sleep.

Sooner or later, fate puts us together with all the people, one by one, who show us what we could, and shouldn’t, let ourselves become. Sooner or later we meet the drunkard, the waster, the betrayer, the ruthless mind, and the hate-filled heart. But fate loads the dice, of course, because we usually find ourselves loving or pitying almost all of those people. And it’s impossible to despise someone you honestly pity, and to shun someone you truly love.

Some things are just so sad that only your soul can do the crying for you.

Glory belongs to God, of course; that's what the word really means. And you can't serve God with a gun.

It isn't a secret, unless keeping it hurts.

Civilization, after all, is defined by what we forbid, more than what we permit.

So when will be the time to get on the train? I think.....a little bit almost quite very soon and not long.

Its a fact of being in love that we often pay no attention whatsoever to the substance of what a lover says, while being intoxicated to ecstasy by the way it's said. I was in love with her eyes, but I didn't read them. I loved her voice, but I didn't really hear the fear & the anguish in it.

Good soldiers are defined by what they can endure, not by what they can inflict.

I look back, now, and I know that the naming moment, which seemed so insignificant then, which seemed to demand no more than an arbitrary and superstitious yes or no, was in fact a pivotal moment in my life.

Every virtuous act has some Dark secret in its heart; every risk we take contains a mystery that can’t be solved.

Some of the worst wrongs, were caused by people who tried to change things.

Shantaram is the second in the series of a quartet of novels that I have planned about my life but is the first to be written. The third book is a sequel to Shantaram, the first a prequel.

Suffering is how we test our love especially our love for God.

The man grinned back at me with that perfect sincerity we fear and call simple-minded.

Poverty and pride are devoted blood brothers until one, always and inevitably, kills the other.

I take everything personally- that's what being a person is all about.

The truth is that the man I am was born in those moments, as I stood near the flood sticks with my face lifted to the chrismal rain. Shantaram. The better man that, slowly, and much too late, I began to be.

A politician is someone who promises a bridge even when there's no water

Indian actors know how to shout with the eyes.

Indians are the Italians of Asia and vice versa. Every man in both countries is a singer when he is happy, and every woman is a dancer when she walks to the shop at the corner. For them, food is the music inside the body and music is the food inside the heart. Amore or Pyar makes every man a poet, a princess of peasant girl if only for second eyes of man and woman meets.

The only power that has any real meaning is the power to better the world.

In the face of all that is so wrong with the world, the very worst thing you can do is survive. And yet you must survive. It is this dilemma that makes us believe and cling to the lie that we have a soul, and that there is a God who cares about its fate.

Fanatics have the look of people who do not masturbate but who think about it almost all time.

The amount of force and violence necessary to board the train, for example was no less and no more than the amoount of politeness and consideration necessary to ensure that the cramped journey was as pleasant as possible afterwards. What is necessary? That was the unspoken but implied, and unavoidable question everywhere in India.

The voice, Afghan matchmakers say, is more than half of love.

People say that love is the best thing in the world not power. But they are wrong. Love is the opposite of power and that's why we fear it so much.

If we can't respect the way we earn it, money has no value. If we can't use it to make life better for our families and loved ones, money has no purpose.

Friendship is an Algebra test that nobody passes.

hate has no literature: real fear and real hate have no words

Didier once told me, in a rambling, midnight dissertation, that a dream is the place where a wish and a fear meet. When the wish and the fear are exactly the same, he said, we call the dream a nightmare.

The truth is a bully we all pretend to like

Anything that can be put in a nut shell should remain there.

It doesnt always help us to love the world,but it does prevent us from hating the world.

You can never tell what people have inside them until you start taking it away, one hope at a time

Cowardece is often just another name for being taken by surprise.

None of us lie or guard our secrets when we sing, and India is a nation of singers whose first love is the kind of song we turn to when crying just isn't enough.

When the wish and the fear are exactly the same, we call the dream a nightmare.