As I read Yann Martel’s Man Booker Prize winning novel Life of Pi, I was mesmerized by author’s unique philosophies regarding life, death, nature and animals. The novel revolves around Zoo and Religion and these are the two things where most of the wisdom one liners are based upon. I am sharing a few of them:
1. The reason death sticks so closely to life isn’t biological necessity- its envy.
2. Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous possessive love that grabs at what it can. But life leaps over oblivion lightly, losing only a thing or two of no importance, and gloom is but the passing shadow of a cloud.
3. And so, in that Greek letter (Pi) that looks like a shack with a corrugated tin roof, in that elusive, irrational number with which scientists try to understand the universe, I found refuge.
4. It was my luck to have a few good teachers in my youth, men and women who came into my dark head and lit a match.
5. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.
6. The most dangerous animal in a zoo is the man.
7. Life will defend itself no matter how small it is. Every animal is ferocious and dangerous.
8. All livings things contain a measure of madness that moves them in strange, sometimes inexplicable ways. This madness can be saving; it is part and parcel of the ability to adapt. Without it, no species would survive.
9. Socially inferior animals are the ones that makes the most strenuous, resourceful effort to get to know their keepers.
10. The individual soul touches upon the world soul like a well reaches for the water table.
11. First wonder goes deepest;wonder after that fits in the impression made by the first.
12. Christianity is a religion in a rush.
13. If Hinduism flows placidly like Ganges, then Christianity bustles like Toronto at rush hour. It is a religion as swift as a swallow, as urgent as an ambulance.
14. The presence of God is the finest of rewards.
15. Of hunger and thirst, thirst is the greater imperative.
16. To be drunk on alcohol is disgraceful, but to be drunk on water is noble and ecstatic.
17. The worst pair of opposites is boredom and terror. Sometimes your life is a pendulum swing from on to the other. The sea is without a wrinkle.Only death consistently excites your emotions, whether contemplating it when life is safe and stale, or fleeing it when life is threatened and precious.
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