Hello and Welcome. This page is a collection of 30 quotes that I liked and saved while reading The Palace of Illusions book by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. I hope you will like them too.
By the way, I am Deepak Kundu, an avid book reader, quotes collector and blogger.
The Palace of Illusions Quotes
- A problem becomes a problem only if you believe it to be so. And often others see you as you see yourself.
- Time is the great eraser, both of sorrow and of joy.
- The problem with you is, you’re too pretty for your own good. It’ll get you into trouble with men sooner or later, if you’re not careful.
- Destiny is strong and swift. You can’t trick it so easily. Even if you hadn’t come seeking it today, in time it would have found you. But in your case, your own nature is going to speed its process.
- Even the wisest don’t know what’s hidden in the depths of their being.
- Three dangerous moments will come to you. The first will be just before your wedding: at that time, hold back your question. The second will be when your husbands are at the height of their power: at that time, hold back your laughter. The third will be when you’re shamed as you’d never imagined possible: at that time, hold back your curse.
- A woman’s life is tougher than a banyan root, which exists without soil or water.
- Remember that, little sister: wait for a man to avenge your honor, and you’ll wait forever.
- We all have past lives. Highly evolved beings remember them, while lesser souls forget.
- To kill the greatest warrior of one’s time is a terrible deed, no matter what the cause. It weakens the foundations of society. It’s worse when it’s done through trickery – and that’s what I’ll have to resort to, because certainly I don’t have the skill to achieve it otherwise. I’m atoning for it in advance, as it’s very likely that I, too, will die in the process.
- The power of a man is like a bull’s charge, while the power of a woman moves aslant, like a serpent seeking its prey. Know the particular properties of your power. Unless you use it correctly, it won’t get you what you want.
- Truth, like a diamond, has many facets.
- Love comes like lightning, and disappears the same way. If you’re lucky, it strikes you right. If not, you’ll spend your life yearning for a man you can’t have. I advise you to forget about love, princess. Pleasure is simpler, and duty more important. Learn to be satisfied with them.
- Don’t underestimate the power of prayer! It might well prevail where muscles failed!
- Isn’t that what our homes are ultimately, our fantasies made corporeal, our secret selves exposed? The converse is also true: we grow to become that which we live within.
- Truth, when it’s being lived, is less glamorous than our imaginings.
- Truly it was a transient world we lived in. Yesterday in a palace, today on the road, tomorrow – who knew? Perhaps I would find the home that had eluded me all my life. But one thing was certain: the currents of history had finally caught me up and were dragging me headlong.
- I wanted to believe that sometimes good may happen without bad biting its heels. I wanted to believe that sometimes the gods give us gifts and ask for nothing back.
- Dear one, time will teach you what you refuse to learn from your well-wishers.
- It’s a rare man – and an even rarer ruler – that can remain untouched by jealousy in the face of a peer’s sudden prosperity.
- The humiliated enemy is the most dangerous one.
- We cannot force ourselves to love – or to withhold it. At best, we can curb our actions. The heart itself is beyond control. That is its power, and its weakness.
- Let the past go. Be at ease. Allow the future to arrive at its own pace, unfurling its secrets when it will.
- When you share a man’s pillow, his dreams seep into you.
- People love to believe that virtue is rapidly rewarded, and that agitation is the fruit of unrighteousness. But things are not so simple.
- Just as we cast off worn clothes and wear new ones, when the time arrives, the soul casts off the body and finds a new one to work out its karma. Therefore the wise grieve neither for the living nor the dead.
- War is like an avalanche. Once begun, it cannot cease until it has wreaked all the destruction it is capable of.
- Wisdom that isn’t distilled in our own crucible can’t help us.
- Perhaps that is the miracle of stories. They make us realize that we’re not alone in our folly and our suffering.
- This is the nature of sorrow: often it fades with time, but once in a while it remains lodged below the surface of things, a stubborn thorn beneath a fingernail, making itself felt every time you brush against it.