Ghond the Hunter Quotes

“Have you ever heard silence? It is not a stillness which is the absence of sound. Silence is not empty, it is full of content. It is like the sky―intangible yet containing the stars, the sun, the moon, and all existence. That is silence and it is full of tongues.”
― Dhan Gopal Mukerji, Ghond the Hunter

“Never go to sleep with bad thoughts and torturing memories. They will not help you to wake up whole and fully serene—the two states of mind and body without which no man can acquit himself well at his day's task. A child should be ushered into the chamber of sleep with serene joy.”
― Dhan Gopal Mukerji, Ghond the Hunter

“Whenever an animal is frightened, particularly a cat, it runs away to get over its disgrace. In the case of a feline such an experience of disgrace remains forever in its character and memory. Fear may take some time to teach, but once it has been learned it can rarely be shaken out of a creature. In the case of a man, thought can be re-educated and through thought his own character can be recast. But animals who are mostly victims of their own habits, unless we, their man-friends, take infinite pains, are rarely de-habituated. More than man, an animal's character is but the sum total of its habits. These are formed by violent emotions such as fear.”
― Dhan Gopal Mukerji, Ghond the Hunter

“What was most surprising, she was giving him the hardest thing to do first, but by failure at the great one he was learning the easier tasks with infallible power and skill. How different that is from our human way of training people, with the easiest always first. In nature animals cannot afford such long drawn-out step-by-step training. Animal children cannot be segregated in the schoolroom from the sharp experiences of life. They have to be educated in the heart of life itself. The easy and the difficult befall them without any sequence. It is a pity that in civilisation man has made the business of education so sequestered and slow.”
― Dhan Gopal Mukerji, Ghond the Hunter

“Fear is taught by grown up men and beasts to their young. Once we learn to be afraid, we rarely shake off the habit, and I believe our fear frightens other beasts causing them to attack us.”
― Dhan Gopal Mukerji, Ghond the Hunter