Quotes from The English Teacher

R.K. Narayan ·  279 pages

Rating: (3K votes)


“I returned from the village. The house seemed unbearably dull. But I bore it. "There is no escape from loneliness and separation...." I told myself often. "Wife, child, brothers, parents, friends.... We come together only to go apart again. It is one continuous movement. They move away from us as we move away from them. The law of life can't be avoided. The law comes into operation the moment we detach ourselves from our mother's womb. All struggle and misery in life is due to our attempt to arrest this law or get away from it or in allowing ourselves to be hurt by it. The fact must be recognized. A profound unmitigated loneliness is the only truth of life. All else is false. My mother got away from her parents, my sisters from our house, I and my brother away from each other, my wife was torn away from me, my daughter is going away with my mother, my father has gone away from his father, my earliest friends - where are they? They scatter apart like the droplets of a waterspray. The law of life. No sense in battling against it...." Thus I reconciled myself to this separation with less struggle than before.”
― R.K. Narayan, quote from The English Teacher


“This education has reduced us to a nation of morons; we were strangers to our own culture and camp followers of another culture, feeding on leavings and garbage . . . What about our own roots? . . . I am up against the system, the whole method and approach of a system of education which makes us morons, cultural morons, but efficient clerks for all your business and administration offices.”
― R.K. Narayan, quote from The English Teacher


“He then explained his new philosophy, which followed the devastating discovery that Love and Friendship were the veriest illusions. He explained that people married because their sexual appetite had to be satisfied and there must be somebody to manage the house. There was nothing deeper than that in any man and woman relationship.”
― R.K. Narayan, quote from The English Teacher


“We stood at the window, gazing on a slender, red streak over the eastern rim of the earth. A cool breeze lapped our faces. The boundaries of our personalities suddenly dissolved. It was a moment of rare, immutable joy--a moment for which one feels grateful to Life and Death.”
― R.K. Narayan, quote from The English Teacher


“The next three days I was very busy. My table was placed in the front room of the new house. All my papers and books were arranged neatly. My clothes hung on a peg. The rest of the house was swept and cleaned.”
― R.K. Narayan, quote from The English Teacher



About the author

R.K. Narayan
Born place: in Chennai, India
Born date October 10, 1906
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“It matters not at all that I do not want to marry, that I am afraid of the wedding, afraid of consummating the marriage, afraid of childbirth, afraid of everything about being a wife. Nobody even asks if I have lost my childhood sense of vocation, if I still want to be a nun. Nobody cares what I think at all. They treat me like an ordinary young woman, bred for wedding and bedding, and since they do not ask me what I think, nor observe what I feel, there is nothing that gives them pause at all.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Red Queen


“men she would soon be assisting would never accept her as the person in charge if she was less than perfect in her role, which meant she must become fully polished. She needed to gain their trust and allegiance if she hoped to find a way to take them down along with Antoine. She had to look, talk, and act like one of their class.”
― Caddy Rowland, quote from House of Pleasure


“If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will avoid a hundred days of sorrow.”
― Robin S. Sharma, quote from Leadership Wisdom from the Monk Who Sold His Ferrari


“The sudden surge of hormones at teenage age will continue to play an important part in the life of young people”
― Oche Otorkpa, quote from The Unseen Terrorist


“Even if it is nonsense, it is often useful to know what kind of nonsense men believe.”
― John Christopher, quote from The Prince in Waiting


Interesting books

The Tournament
(5.9K)
The Tournament
by Matthew Reilly
The Queen of Blood
(4.7K)
The Queen of Blood
by Sarah Beth Durst
The Last of August
(5.6K)
The Last of August
by Brittany Cavallaro
Madonna in a Fur Coat
(25.6K)
Madonna in a Fur Coa...
by Sabahattin Ali
The Bone Witch
(6.2K)
The Bone Witch
by Rin Chupeco
Shutter
(2.2K)
Shutter
by Courtney Alameda

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.