Because a women's beauty does not belong to her alone. It is a part of the bounty she brings into the world. She has a duty to share it.

I speak to the broken halves of all our selves and tell them to embrace, loving the worst in us equally with the best.

Become major, Paul. Live like a hero. That's what the classics teach us. Be a main character. Otherwise what is life for?

We must cultivate, all of us, a certain ignorance, a certain blindness, or society will not be tolerable.

It seemed to me that all things were possible on the island, all tyrannies and cruelties, though in small; and if, in despite of what was possible, we lived at peace with another, surely this was proof that certain laws unknown to us held sway, or else that we had been following the promptings of our hearts all this time, and our hearts had not betrayed us.

He even knew the reason why: because enough men had gone off to war saying the time for gardening was when the war was over; whereas there must be men to stay behind and keep gardening alive, or at least the idea of gardening; because once that cord was broken, the earth would grow hard and forget her children. That was why.

[Hariharan is] an outstanding writer.