One clings desperately to some vain hope, till a day comes when it has sucked the heart dry and then it breaks through its bonds and departs. After that comes the misery of awakening, and then once again the longing to get back into the maze of the same mistakes.
Man is not to fight with other human races, other human individuals, but his work is to bring about reconciliation and Peace and to restore the bonds of friendship and love. We are not like fighting beasts. It is the life of self which is predominating in our life, the self which is creating the seclusion, giving rise to sufferings, to jealousy and hatred, to political and commercial competition. All these illusions will vanish, if we go down to the heart of.
These were autumn mornings, the very time of year when kings of old went forth to conquest; and I, never stirring from my little corner in Calcutta, would let my mind wander over the whole world.
We can look upon a road from two different points of view. One regards it as dividing us from the object of our desire; in that case we count every step of our journey over it as something attained by force in the face of obstruction. The other sees it as the road which leads us to our destination; and as such it is part of our goal.
Like the meeting of the seagulls and the waves we meet and come near. The seagulls fly off, the waves roll away and we depart.
In your body is the garden of flowers. Take your seat on the thousand petals of the lotus, and there gaze on the Infinite Beauty.
Be not ashamed, my brothers, to stand before the proud and the powerful With your white robe of simpleness. Let your crown be of humility, your freedom the freedom of the soul. Build God’s throne daily upon the ample bareness of your poverty And know that what is huge is not great and pride is not everlasting.
THE mind, sharp but not broad, sticks at every point but does not move.
The pain of dwelling on the wrongs done to us by other people far exceeds the little bit of pleasure we derive from condemning others for their guilt.
It was always the poor grass that suffered most when two kings went to war.
Woman knows man well enough where he is weak, but she is quite unable to fathom him where he is strong. The fact is that man is as much a mystery to woman as woman is to man. If that were not so, the separation of the sexes would only have been a waste of Nature’s energy.
True modernism is freedom of mind, not slavery of taste. It is independence of thought and action, not tutelage under European schoolmasters.
If the cow alone is to be held sacred from slaughter, and not the buffalo, then that is bigotry, not religion.
Many an hour I have spent in the strife of the good and the evil, but now it is the pleasure of my playmate of the empty days to draw my heart on to him;.
YOUR speech is simple, my Master, but not theirs who talk of you.
Vanity is not like a horse or an elephant requiring expensive fodder.
THE mighty desert is burning for the love of a blade of grass who shakes her head and laughs and flies away.
I have spent a fortune traveling to distant shores and looked at lofty mountains and boundless oceans, and yet I haven’t found time to take a few steps from my house to look at a single dew drop on a single blade of grass.
In pleasure and in pain I stand not by the side of men, and thus stand by thee. I shrink to give up my life, and thus do not plunge into the great waters of life.
Clothed in facts truth feels oppressed. In the garb of poetry it moves easy and free.