A Passage to India Events Quotes

The roads, named after victorious generals and intersecting at right angles, were symbolic of the net Great Britain had thrown over India. He felt caught in their meshes. (1.2.46)

A community that bows the knee to a Viceroy and believes that the divinity that hedges a king can be transplanted, must feel some reverence for any viceregal substitute. At Chandrapore the Turtons...

And there were circles even beyond these – people wore nothing but a loin-cloth, people who wore not even that, and spent their lives in knocking two sticks together before a scarlet doll ...

One touch of regret – not the canny substitute but the t rue regret from the heart – would have made him a different man, and the British Empire a different institution. "I'm going to a...

[Major Callendar] never realized that the educated Indians visited one another constantly, and were weaving, however painfully, a new social fabric. (1.6.7)

The world, [Fielding] believed, is a globe of men who are trying to reach one another and can best do so by the help of good will plus culture and intelligence. (1.7.2)

"[…] Aziz was exquisitely dressed, from tie-pin to spats, but he had forgotten his back collar-stud, and there you have the Indian all over: inattention to detail, the fundamental slackness t...

Hamidullah had called in on his way to a worrying committee of notables, nationalist in tendency, where Hindus, Moslems, two Sikhs, two Parsis, a Jain and a Native Christian tried to like one anoth...

"She was my wife. You are the first Englishman she has ever come before. Now put her photograph away." (1.11.9)

[The visitor] finds it difficult to discuss the caves, or to keep them apart in his mind, for the pattern never varies, and no carving, not even a bees'-nest or a bat distinguishes one from another...

[Adela] was particularly vexed now because she was both in India and engaged to be married, which double event should have made every instant sublime. (2.14.2)

Not to love the man one's going to marry! Not to find it out till this moment! Not even to have asked oneself the question until now! (2.15.4)

[Fielding] had not gone mad at the phrase "an English girl fresh from England," he had not rallied to the banner of race. He was still after facts, though the herd had decided on emotion. Nothing e...

"All unfortunate natives are criminals at heart, for the simple reason that they live south of latitude 30." (2.18.1)

[Fielding] foresaw that besides being a tragedy, there would be a muddle; already he saw several tiresome little knots, and each time his eye returned to them, they were larger. Born in freedom, he...

The dread of having to call in the troops was vivid to [Turton]; soldiers put one thing straight, but leave a dozen others crooked, and they love to humiliate the civilian administration. (2.20.20)

But in the twilight of the double vision, a spiritual muddledom is set up for which no high-sounding words can be found […] What had spoken to her in that scoured-out cavity of granite? What...

A new spirit seemed abroad, a rearrangement, which no one in the stern little band of whites could explain. (2.24.24)

The Marabar Caves had been a terrible strain on the local administration; they altered a good many lives and wrecked several careers, but they did not break up a continent or even dislocate a distr...

"[…] [M]y belief is that poor McBryde exorcised you. As soon as he asked you a straightforward question, you gave a straightforward answer, and broke down." (2.26.30)

This restfulness of gesture – it is the Peace that passeth Understanding, after all, it is the social equivalent of Yoga. When the whirring of action ceases, it becomes visible, and reveals a...

"[…] Indians know whether they are liked or not – they cannot be fooled here. Justice never satisfies them, and that is why the British Empire rests on sand." (2.29.2)

[T]he harmony between the works of man and the earth that upholds them, the civilization that has escaped muddle, the spirit in a reasonable form, with flesh and blood subsisting […] The Medi...

When the villagers broke cordon for a glimpse of the silver image, a most beautiful and radiant expression came into their faces, a beauty in which there was nothing personal, for it caused them al...

This pose of "seeing India" which had seduced him to Miss Quested at Chandrapore was only a form of ruling India; no sympathy lay behind it […] (3.34.4)

But the horses didn't want it – they swerved apart; the earth didn't want it … they didn't want it, they said in their hundred voices, "No, not yet," and the sky said, "No, not there."...

The shock was minute, but Stella, nearest to it, shrank into her husband's arms, then reached forward, then flung herself against Aziz, and her motions capsized them. They plunged into the warm, sh...