From the Bookshelf of Retro Reads…

because Afghanistan is no country to fight a war in – and an impossible one to hold if you win

People everywhere preferred to make their own mistakes, and resented strangers (even efficient and well-meaning ones) interfering with their affairs

Had he been older and wiser, and less badly hurt himself, he might have recognized it for what it was: a tantrum thrown by a spoilt child who has been courted and flattered and over-indulged to a point where good sense and youthful high-spirits have turned to conceit and vanity, and any opposition – any fancied slight – is magnified into an unforgivable injur

I do not doubt that you would have done all that was in your power to make her happy. But it is not in your power to build a new world; or to turn back time

the East has never believed in the theory that segregation and quiet are necessary to the sick

Asia has little regard for Time

in the East a respectable woman, when visiting abroad, is an anonymous figure to whom no attention should be paid

he had always known that to Hindus, whose gods were legion, caste was all-important, and that the only way to become a Hindu was to be born one

The fact that religion has not brought love and brotherhood and peace to mankind, but, as was promised, a sword.

'Yet many of different faiths have shown us great kindness.’ ‘Kindness, yes. But they haven't accepted us as one of themselves'