From ‘Scenes from a writer's life. A Memoir’ by Ruskin Bond

Shakespeare …

This above all, to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou can’st not then be false to any man.



The pure, the bright, the beautiful,
That stirred our hearts in youth,
The impulse to a wordless prayer,
The dreams of love and truth;
The longings after something lost,
The spirit’s yearning cry,
The striving after better hopes …
These things can never die!
- Sarah Doudney



‘No Somi, I’m too lazy to get dressed now. Sit and talk.’

I am becoming too lazy for anything.

Perhaps I am rotting here, perhaps the West will do me good. I have achieved nothing. I have achieved nothing but happiness.

But I must not give way to ambition, else I shall lose that happiness. One day there will come a time of rush and work and worry, and then I shall long for this peace, this idleness, this present.

I must not forget how to be lazy. Dear Reader, nearly fifty years on I’m still very lazy