Things Fall Apart Quotes

he was repentant [for breaking Week of Peace]

Okonkwo knew that the boys were still too young to understand fully the difficult art of preparing seed-yams

inwardly of course

unless it be the emotion of anger

I shall break your jaw.’

at his son’s development, and he knew it was due to Ikemefuna

I should be happy.’

for his father’s house

to kill a man’s spirit

like a king

being thought weak

have armed themselves’

to conquer and subdue

the fear of failure and weakness

‘If a man comes into my hut and defaecates on the floor, what do I do? Do I shut my eyes? No! I take a stick and break his head. That is what a man does.’

as if he was going to pounce on somebody. And he did pounce on people quite often.

He saw himself and his father crowding round their ancestral shrine waiting in vain for worship and sacrifice and finding but ashes of bygone days, and his children the while praying to the white man’s god.

At an early age he had achieved fame as the greatest wrestler in all the land. That was not luck. At the most one could say that his chi or personal god was good. But the Ibo people have a proverb that when a man says yes his chi says yes also. Okonkwo said yes very strongly; so his chi agreed.

You do not know what it is to speak with one voice. And what is the result? An abominable religion has settled among you. A man can now leave his father and his brothers. He can curse the gods of his fathers and his ancestors, like a hunter’s dog that suddenly goes mad and turns on his master. I fear for you; I fear for the clan.’

but a man of action

which he saw breaking up and falling apart, and he mourned for the warlike men of Umuofia

‘I have even heard that in some tribes a man’s children belong to his wife and her family.’

by the fear of his father’s contemptible life and shameful death

into a sad-faced youth

so deeply attached to each other

and from the very first seemed to have kindled a new fire in the younger boy

but somehow he still preferred the stories his mother used to tell

and why he should live all by himself, cooking and eating. In the end he decided that Nnadi must live in that land of Ikemefuna’s favourite story where the ant holds his court in splendour and the sands dance for ever.

Do not bear a hand in his death.’

and something seemed to give way inside him, like the snapping of a tightened bow

begets cold, impotent ash

that my son should be killed I would neither dispute it nor be the one to do it.’

is too sharp’

who thought about things

He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart.’

‘The world has no end, and what is good among one people is an abomination with others.’

A proud heart can survive a general failure because such a failure does not prick its pride. It is more difficult and more bitter when a man fails alone.’

who says nothing.’

for an offence he had committed inadvertently? But although he thought for a long time he found no answer. He was merely led into greater complexities. He remembered his wife’s twin children, whom he had thrown away. What crime had they committed?

to save them from starving. … We come together because it is good for kinsmen to do so.’

by one passion - to hate everything that his father Unoka had loved. One of those things was gentleness and another was idleness.

both sides of the case.’

this man or to praise that, but to settle the dispute.’

an Egwugwu in public, or to say or do anything which might reduce its immortal prestige in the eyes of the uninitiated. And this was what Enoch did.'

is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten.

to the great paves the way for his own greatness.’

They settled on every tree and on every blade of grass; they settled on the roofs and covered the bare ground. Mighty tree branches broke away under them, and the whole country became the brown-earth colour of the vast, hungry swarm.

brought oil it soiled the others

wiped out.’

It said that other white men were on their way. They were locusts, it said, and that first man was their harbinger sent to explore the terrain.’

which had the power of plucking at silent and dusty chords in the heart of an Ibo man

in the marrow. The hymn about brothers who sat in darkness and in fear seemed to answer a vague and persistent question that haunted his young soul - the question of the twins crying in the bush and the question of Ikemefuna who was killed. He felt a relief within as the hymn poured into his parched soul.

and soon they were among the strongest adherents of the new faith

and were now a small community of men, women and children, self-assured and confident

even by the clan, because he trod softly on its faith

And black was evil. He saw the world as a battlefield in which the children of light were locked in mortal conflict with the sons of darkness. He spoke in his sermons about sheep and goats and about wheat and tares. He believed in slaying the prophets of Baal.

according to his worth and not according to the worth of his father

but achievement was revered. As the elders said, if a child washed his hands he could eat with kings.

its case was clear and just and was accepted as such by its Oracle

‘There are so many people on it that if you threw up a grain of sand it would not find a way to fall to earth again.’

She was the ultimate judge of morality and conduct.

for joy throughout Umuofia

he does not understand our customs, just as we do not understand his. We say he is foolish because he does not know our ways, and perhaps he says we are foolish because we do not know his.’