“In a gentle way you can shake the world.”

“A man of few words will rarely be thoughtless in his speech; he will measure every word.”

“Even the most despotic government cannot stand except for the consent of the governed.... Immediately the subject ceases to fear the despotic force, his power is gone.”

“Friendship that insists upon agreement on all matters is not worth the name. Friendship to be real must ever sustain the weight of honest differences, however sharp they be.”

“Je n'ai jamais pu comprendre comment on pouvait se sentir honoré de voir ses semblables humiliés.”

“A moral life, without reference to religion, is like a house built upon sand. And religion, divorced from morality, is like “sounding brass, good only for making a noise and breaking heads.”

“Knowledge without devotion will be like a misfire. Therefore, says the Gita, ‘Have devotion, and knowledge will follow.’ This devotion is not mere lip worship, it is a wrestling with death. Hence, the Gita’s assessment of the devotee’s quality is similar to that of the sage. 17. Thus the devotion required by the Gita is no soft-hearted effusiveness. It”

“Religion which takes no account of practical affairs and does not help to solve them is no religion.”

“My difficulties lay deeper. It was more than I could believe that Jesus was the only incarnate son of God, and that only he who believed in him would have everlasting life. If God could have sons, all of us were His sons. If Jesus was like God, or God Himself, then all men were like God and could be God Himself. My reason was not ready to believe literally that Jesus by his death and by his blood redeemed the sins of the world. Metaphorically there might be some truth in it. Again, according to Christianity only human beings had souls, and not other living beings, for whom death meant complete extinction; while I held a contrary belief. I could accept Jesus as a martyr, an embodiment of sacrifice, and a divine teacher, but not as the most perfect man ever born. His death on the Cross was a great example to the world, but that there was anything like a mysterious or miraculous virtue in it my heart could not accept. The pious lives of Christians did not give me anything that the lives of men of other faiths had failed to give. I had seen in other lives just the same reformation that I had heard of among Christians. Philosophically there was nothing extraordinary in Christian principles. From the point of view of sacrifice, it seemed to me that the Hindus greatly surpassed the Christians. It was impossible for me to regard Christianity as a perfect religion or the greatest of all religions.”

“Je dois dire qu'en dehors des cas où elle m'exposa au ridicule, cette timidité insurmontable n'a jamais tourné à mon désavantage. Bien au contraire, j'ai mis ce handicap à profit en apprenant à devenir concis. Jadis je cherchais mes mots. Aujourd'hui je prends plaisir à en réduire le nombre.”

“When I admire the wonders of a sunset or the beauty of the moon, my soul expands in the worship of the creator.”

“Of all the evils for which man has made himself responsible, none is so degrading, so shocking or so brutal as his abuse of the better half of humanity; the female sex.”

“A person who is of fixed mind in a small matter can be so even in a big matter. If he is asked to make an ellipsoid of clay and concentrate on it, he would do so. In trying to concentrate on any object, one is likely to be distracted by all manner of troublesome thoughts. A person to whom this happens may be described as one whose intellect is not fixed on one aim. One who would succeed in the yoga of works must be of a fixed mind in small matters as well as big.”

“bad handwriting should be regarded as a sign of an imperfect education.”

“In prayer it is better to have a heart without words than words without a heart.”