“A vakil should know human nature. He should be able to read a man’s character from his face. And every Indian ought to know Indian history.”

“Third-class passengers are treated like sheep and their comforts are sheep’s comforts.”

“It was only in South Africa that I got over this shyness, though I never completely overcame it. It was impossible for me to speak impromptu. I hesitated whenever I had to face strange audiences and avoided making a speech whenever I could. Even today I do not think I could or would even be inclined to keep a meeting of friends engaged in idle talk. I must say that, beyond occasionally exposing me to laughter, my constitutional shyness has been no disadvantage whatever. In fact I can see that, on the contrary, it has been all to my advantage. My hesitancy in speech, which was once an annoyance, is now a pleasure. Its greatest benefit has been that it has taught me the economy of words. I have naturally formed the habit of restraining my thoughts. And I can now give myself the certificate that a thoughtless word hardly ever escapes my tongue or pen. I do not recollect ever having had to regret anything in my speech or writing. I have thus been spared many a mishap and waste of time. Experience has taught me that silence is part of the spiritual discipline of a votary of truth. Proneness to exaggerate, to suppress or modify the truth, wittingly or unwittingly, is a natural weakness of man, and silence is necessary in order to surmount it. A man of few words will rarely be thoughtless in his speech; he will measure every word. We find so many people impatient to talk. There is no chairman of a meeting who is not pestered with notes for permission to speak. And whenever the permission is given the speaker generally exceeds the time-limit, asks for more time, and keeps on talking without permission. All this talking can hardly be said to be of any benefit to the world. It is so much waste of time. My shyness has been in reality my shield and buckler. It has allowed me to grow. It has helped me in my discernment of truth.”

“No problem is too small or too trivial if we can really do something about it.”

“A true Brahmachari will not even dream of satisfying the fleshly appetite”

“It does not require money, to live neat, clean and dignified..”

“True morality consists not in following the beaten track, but in finding the true path for ourselves, and fearlessly following it.”

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated

“it appears that, as is the case in our time with the ills of all nations, the reason lies in the lack of a reasonable religious teaching which by explaining the meaning of life would supply a supreme law for the guidance of conduct and would replace the more than dubious precepts of pseudo-religion and pseudo-science with the immoral conclusions deduced from them and commonly called 'civilization'.  ”

“Love is the strongest force the world possesses and yet it is the humblest imaginable.”

“Lebe, als würdest Du morgen sterben und lerne, als ob Du ewig leben würdest.”

“They may torture my body, break my bones, even kill me. Then they will have my dead body, but not my obedience.”

“Numerous examples have convinced me that God ultimately saves him whose motive is pure.”

“To see the universal and all-pervading Spirit of Truth face to face one must be able to love the meanest of creation as oneself.”

“There is nothing that wastes the body like worry, and one who has any faith in God should be ashamed to worry about anything whatsoever. ”