“But you can wake a man only if he is really asleep. No effort that you make will produce any effect upon him if he is merely pretending sleep.”

“Why, then, grieve — tatra ka paridevana — asks Shri Krishna. This is the great mystery of God. As a magician creates the illusion of a tree and destroys it, so God sports in endless ways and does not let us know the beginning and the end of his play. Why grieve over it?”

“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.”

“That matchless remedy (for self realisation) is renunciation of fruits of action.”

“Disease increases in proportion to the increase in the number of doctors in a place.”

“Forgive and forget, but never forget to forgive. You may find a happier heart is the key to a happier life.”

“One of the objects of a newspaper is to understand popular feeling and to give expression to it; another is to arouse among the people certain desirable sentiments; and the third is fearlessly to expose popular defects.”

“Action expresses priorities.”

“The earth provides enough to satisfy every person's need, but not every person's greed.”

“Among the many misdeeds of British rule in India, history will look upon the Act which deprived a whole nation of arms as the blackest.”

“Breach of promise is a base surrender of truth.”

“It was with some difficulty that I got through the multiplication tables. The fact that I recollect nothing more of those days than having learnt, in company with other boys, to call our teacher all kinds of names, would strongly suggest that my intellect must have been sluggish, and my memory raw.”

“had read the laws, but not learnt how to practise law.”

“Kebijaksanaan yang paling tinggi adalah, jangan khawatir akan hari esok.”

“There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.”