Why do we want to know history? Why does history form a recognized part of our liberal education? Simply because all of us, and every one of us, ought to know how we have come to be what we are, so that each generation need not start again from the same point, and toil over the same ground, but, profiting by the experience of those who came before, may advance towards higher points and nobler aims.
On religions and viewpoints: He who knows one, knows none.
If I were to look over the whole world to find out the country most richly endowed with all the wealth, power and beauty that nature can bestow-in some parts a very paradise on earth-I should point to India.
For hatred does not cease by hatred at any time: hatred ceases by love, this is an old rule.
He only shows mankind how beautiful everything is which man's hand has not yet spoiled or broken.
He who seeks beauty will eventually find it, and discover that the Persians are not entirely deceived in their Hafiz, nor the Hindoos in their Kalidasa.
On religions: He who knows one, knows none.
Religion is trust, and that trust arose in the beginning from the impressions made on the mind and heart of man by the order and wisdom of nature, and more particularly, by those regularly recurring events, the return of the sun, the revival of the moon, the order of the seasons, the law of cause and effect, gradually discovered in all things, and traced back in the end to a cause of all causes, by whatever name we choose to call it.
What does Yagwavalkya say?'It is not our hermitage,' he says-our religion ,we might say-'still less the colour of our skin, that produces virtue ; virtue must be practised. Therefore let no one do to others what he would not have done to himself.
All the fallacies of human reason had to be exhausted, before the light of a high truth could meet with ready acceptance.
Now let us look to the ancient inhabitants of India. With them, first of all, religion was not only one interest by the side of many. It was the all-absorbing interest; it embraced not only worship and prayer, but what we call philosophy, morality, law, and government, -all was pervaded by religion. Their whole life was to them a religion-everything else was, as it were, a mere concession made to the ephemeral requirements of this life.
The true history of the world must always be the history of the few; and as we measure the Himalaya by the height of Mount Everest, we must take the true measure of India from the poets of the Veda, the sages of the Upanishads, the founders of the Vedanta and Sankhya philosophies, and the authors of the oldest law-books, and not from the millions who are born and die in their villages, and who have never for one moment been roused out of their drowsy dream of life.
Let us live happily, without hate amongst those who hate. Let us dwell unhating amidst hateful men.Let us live happily, in good health amongst those who are sick.Let us dwell in good health amidst ailing men.Let us live happily, without yearning for sensual pleasures amongst those who yearn for them.Let us dwell without yearning amidst those who yearn.Let us live happily, we who have no impediments. We shall subsist on joy even as the radiant gods.
Truthfulness is a luxury, perhaps the greatest, and let me assure you, the most expensive luxury in our life-and happy the man who has been able to enjoy it from his very child hood.
And if I were to ask myself from what literature we who have been nurtured almost exclusively on the thoughts of Greeks and Romans, and of the Semitic race, the Jewish, may draw the corrective which is most wanted in order to make our inner life more perfect, more comprehensive, more universal, in fact more truly human a life... again I should point to India.
There never was a false god, nor was there ever really a false religion, unless you call a child a false man.
Christianity is a missionary religion, converting, advancing, aggressive, encompassing the world; a non-missionary church is in the bands of death.
To me this technical acceptation seems not applicable here, where we have to deal with the simplest moral precepts, and not with psychological niceties of Buddhist philosophy.
Without a belief in personal immortality, religion surely is like an arch resting on one pillar, like a bridge ending in an abyss.
What ought to be done is neglected, what ought not to be done is done; the desires of unruly, thoughtless people are always increasing.
Hunger is the worst of diseases, the body the greatest of pains; if one knows this truly, that is Nirv?na, the highest happiness.
He in whom all this is destroyed, and taken out with the very root, he, when freed from hatred and wise, is called respectable.
He who, by causing pain to others, wishes to obtain pleasure for himself, he, entangled in the bonds of hatred, will never be free from hatred.
An evil deed is better left undone, for a man repents of it afterwards; a good deed is better done, for having done it, one does not repent.
A man is not learned because he talks much; he who is patient, free from hatred and fear, he is called learned.
There is no book in the world that is so thrilling, stirring and inspiring as the Upanishads.
A flower cannot blossom without sunshine, and man cannot live without love.
Whatever sphere of the human mind you may select for your special study, whether it be language, or religion, or mythology, or philosophy, whether it be laws or customs, primitive art or primitive science, everywhere, you have to go to India, whether you like it or not, because some of the most valuable and most instructive materials in the history of man are treasured up in India, and in India only.
Victory breeds hatred, for the conquered is unhappy.
Childhood has its secrets and its mysteries; but who can tell or who can explain them!
While the river of life glides along smoothly, it remains the same river; only the landscape on either bank seems to change.
I spend my happiest hours in reading Vedantic books. They are to me like the light of the morning, like the pure air of the mountains - so simple, so true, if once understood.
He who, though dressed in fine apparel, exercises tranquillity, is quiet, subdued, restrained, chaste, and has ceased to find fault with all other beings, he indeed is an ascetic.
Samskrit is the greatest language of the world.
And then when all around grows dark, when we feel utterly alone, when all men right and left pass us by and know us not, a forgotten feeling rises in the breast.
As a tree, even though it has been cut down, is firm so long as its root is safe, and grows again, thus, unless the feeders of thirst are destroyed, the pain (of life) will return again and again.
Soon the child learns that there are strangers, and ceases to be a child.
The spring of love becomes hidden and soon filled up.
Of these years nought remains in memory but the sad feeling that we have advanced and only grown older.
Would not the child's heart break in despair when the first cold storm of the world sweeps over it, if the warm sunlight of love from the eyes of mother and father did not shine upon him like the soft reflection of divine light and love?