“I believe that just as everyone inherits a particular form so does he inherit the particular characteristics and qualities of his progenitors, and to make this admission is to conserve one's energy.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“The manner in which the Gita has solved the problem is to my knowledge unique. The Gita says, ‘Do your allotted work but renounce its fruit — be detached and work — have no desire for reward and work.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“Human language can but imperfectly describe God's ways. I am sensible of the fact that they are indescribable and inscrutable. But if mortal man will dare to describe them, he has no better medium than his own inarticulate speech.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“Cowardice is impotence worse than violence. The coward desires revenge but being afraid to die, he looks to others, maybe to the government of the day, to do the work of defense for him. A coward is less than a man. He does not deserve to be a member of a society of men and women.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“If physical fasting is not accompanied by mental fasting it is bound to end in hypocrisy and disaster.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“Non-violence, which is the quality of the heart, cannot come by an appeal to the brain.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“Every home is a university and the parents are the teachers.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“To give pleasure to a single heart by a single act is better than a thousand heads bowing in prayer.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“If you want something really important to be done you must not merely satisfy the reason, you must move the heart also.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“[T]he devotion required by the Gita is no soft-hearted effusiveness. It certainly is not blind faith. The devotion of the Gita has the least to do with the externals. A devotee may use, if he likes, rosaries, forehead marks, make offerings, but these things are no test of his devotion. He is the devotee who is jealous of none, who is a fount of mercy, who is without egotism, who is selfless, who treats alike cold and heat, happiness and misery, who is ever forgiving, who is always contented, whose resolutions are firm, who has dedicated mind and soul to God, who causes no dread, who is not afraid of others, who is free from exultation, sorrow and fear, who is pure, who is versed in action and yet remains unaffected by it, who renounces all fruit, good or bad, who treats friend and foe alike, who is untouched by respect or disrespect, who is not puffed up by praise, who does not go under when people speak ill of him who loves silence and solitude, who has a disciplined reason. Such devotion is inconsistent with the existence at the same time of strong attachments.
We thus see that to be a real devotee is to realize oneself.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“[We] need the same advice that was given to Martha. If we but do “the one thing needful,” there is no occasion for us to be “anxious and troubled” about the many things in the shape of wanting to know what our Governors will do, or who the next Prime Minister is likely to be, or what laws affecting us are likely to be passed
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“Every seeker has, at one time or another, to pass through a conflict of duties, a heart-churning.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“Truth is by nature self-evident. As soon as you remove the cobwebs of ignorance that surround it, it shines clear.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“Truth resides in every human heart,
and one has to search for it there,
and to be guided by truth as one sees it.
But no one has a right to coerce others
to act according to his own view of truth.
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“But I could not for the life of me find out a new name, and therefore offered a nominal prize through Indian Opinion to the reader who made the best suggestion on the subject. As a result Maganlal Gandhi coined the word Sadagraha (Sat: truth, Agraha: firmness) and won the prize. But in order to make it clearer I changed the word to Satyagraha which has since become current in Gujarati as a designation for the struggle.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
