“Love is something more stern and splendid than mere kindness.”

“Truth is timeless. Truth does not differ from one age to another, from one people to another, from one geographical location to another . . . the great all-prevailing Truth stands for time and eternity.”

“that God “giveth his beloved sleep” (Ps. 127:2).” 

“In Gethsemane the holiest of all petitioners prayed three times that a certain cup might pass from Him. It did not.”

“Banning not only confines one physically, it imprisons one's spirit. it induces a kind of psychological claustrophobia that makes one yearn not only for freedom of movement but spiritual escape...This insidious effect of bans was that at a certain point one began to think that the opponent was not without but within.” 

“He that but looketh on a plate of ham and eggs to lust after it hath already committed breakfast with it in his heart”

“Things always work according to their nature.”

“In Varenka, she realized that one has but to forget oneself and love others, and one will be calm, happy, and noble.”

“The day hums sweetly when you have enough bees working for you.”

“[While] disappointment and failure aren’t identical, they often occur together, and both can hold us back from God’s best for our lives.”

“The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived and dishonest--but the myth--persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.

“Children inherit the qualities of the parents, no less than their physical features. Environment does play an important part, but the original capital on which a child starts in life is inherited from its ancestors. I have also seen children successfully surmounting the effects of an evil inheritance. That is due to purity being an inherent attribute of the soul. Polak and I had often very heated discussions about the desirability or otherwise of giving the children an English education. It has always been my conviction that Indian parents who train their children to think and talk in English from their infancy betray their children and their country. They deprive them of the spiritual and social heritage of the nation, and render them to that extent unfit for the service of the country. Having these convictions, I made a point of always talking to my children in Gujarati. Polak never liked this. He thought I was spoiling their future. He contended, with all the vigour and love at his command, that, if children were to learn a universal language like English from their infancy, they would easily gain considerable advantage over others in the race of life. He failed to convince me. I do not now remember whether I convinced him of the correctness of my attitude, or whether he gave me up as too obstinate. This happened about twenty years ago, and my convictions have only deepened with experience. Though my sons have suffered for want of full literary education, the knowledge of the mother-tongue that they naturally acquired has been all to their and the country’s good, inasmuch as they do not appear the foreigners they would otherwise have appeared. They naturally became bilingual, speaking and writing English with fair ease, because of daily contact with a large circle of English friends, and because of their stay in a country where English was the chief language spoken.”

“To safeguard democracy the people must have a keen sense of independence, self-respect and their oneness, and should insist upon choosing as their representatives only such persons as are good and true.”

“You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.”

“The supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a simple datum of experience.”