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

“Morality is a contraband in war.”

“Prayer is the key of the morning and the bolt of the evening.” 

“I do believe that, where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence.”

“We labour under a sort of superstition that the child has nothing to learn during the first five years of its life. On the contrary the fact is that the child never learns in after-life what it does in its first five years.”

“live simply so others can simply live”

“To give pleasure to a single heart by a single act is better than a thousand heads bowing in prayer.”

“You civilised fellows are all cowards. Great men never look at a person’s exterior. They think of his heart.”

“Service which is rendered without joy helps neither the servant nor the served. But all other pleasures and possessions pale into nothingness before service which is rendered in a spirit of joy.”

“Every seeker has, at one time or another, to pass through a conflict of duties, a heart-churning.”

“Every home is a university and the parents are the teachers.”

“If by strength is meant brute strength, then, indeed, is woman less brute than man. If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably man’s superior.”

“How can a person who has awakened to the truth about his body ever die? Such a one attains to immortality.”

“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.”

“But truth is hard as adamant and tender as a blossom.”