Max Muller Quotes
I spend my happiest hours in reading Vedantic books. They are to me like the light of the morning, like the pure air of the mountains - so simple, so true, if once understood.
Is it sin, which makes the worm a chrysalis, and the chrysalis a butterfly, and the butterfly dust?
As a tree, even though it has been cut down, is firm so long as its root is safe, and grows again, thus, unless the feeders of thirst are destroyed, the pain (of life) will return again and again.
The Vedic literature opens to us a chapter in what has been called the education of the human race to which we can find no parallel anywhere else.
He who, though dressed in fine apparel, exercises tranquillity, is quiet, subdued, restrained, chaste, and has ceased to find fault with all other beings, he indeed is an ascetic.
While the river of life glides along smoothly, it remains the same river; only the landscape on either bank seems to change.
A man is not learned because he talks much; he who is patient, free from hatred and fear, he is called learned.
There is no book in the world that is so thrilling, stirring and inspiring as the Upanishads.
He who wishes to put on the yellow dress without having cleansed himself from sin, who disregards temperance and truth, is unworthy of the yellow dress.
Every life has its years in which one progresses as on a tedious and dusty street of poplars, without caring to know where he is.
Not far from our house, and opposite the old church with the golden cross, stood a large building, even larger than the church, and having many towers.
The scent of flowers does not travel against the wind; but the odor of good people travels; even against the wind: a good man pervades every place.
That deed is not well done of which a man must repent, and the reward of which he receives crying and with a tearful face.
The evil-doer mourns in the next; he mourns in both. He mourns and suffers when he sees the evil of his own work.
Without a belief in personal immortality, religion surely is like an arch resting on one pillar, like a bridge ending in an abyss.
The man who is free from credulity, but knows the uncreated, who has cut all ties, removed all temptations, renounced all desires, he is the greatest of men.
In order to discover truth, we must be truthful ourselves, and must welcome those who point out our errors as heartily as those who approve and confirm our discoveries.
He who, by causing pain to others, wishes to obtain pleasure for himself, he, entangled in the bonds of hatred, will never be free from hatred.
Whoever knows it also knows that in love there is no More and no Less; but that he who loves can only love with the whole heart, and with the whole soul; with all his strength and with all his will.
An evil deed is better left undone, for a man repents of it afterwards; a good deed is better done, for having done it, one does not repent.
Of these years nought remains in memory but the sad feeling that we have advanced and only grown older.
Even a good man sees evil days, as long as his good deed has not ripened; but when his good deed has ripened, then does the good man see happy days.
For self is the lord of self, self is the refuge of self; therefore curb thyself as the merchant curbs a good horse.
That is the returning to God which in reality is never concluded on earth but yet leaves behind in the soul a divine home sickness, which never again ceases.
What ought to be done is neglected, what ought not to be done is done; the desires of unruly, thoughtless people are always increasing.
He in whom all this is destroyed, and taken out with the very root, he, when freed from hatred and wise, is called respectable.
Bad deeds, and deeds hurtful to ourselves, are easy to do; what is beneficial and good, that is very difficult to do.
When the evil deed, after it has become known, brings sorrow to the fool, then it destroys his bright lot, nay, it cleaves his head.
The wise who control their body, who control their tongue, the wise who control their mind, are indeed well controlled.
The gospel is the fulfillment of all hopes, the perfection of all philosophy, the interpretation of all revelation, the key to all the seeming contradictions of the physical and moral world.
The evil done by oneself, self-begotten, self-bred, crushes the foolish, as a diamond breaks a precious stone.
There never was a false god, nor was there ever really a false religion, unless you call a child a false man.
It smote me to the heart that I had found no one in all the world who loved me more than all others.
Even in heavenly pleasures he finds no satisfaction, the disciple who is fully awakened delights only in the destruction of all desires.
Hunger is the worst of diseases, the body the greatest of pains; if one knows this truly, that is Nirv?na, the highest happiness.
Christianity is a missionary religion, converting, advancing, aggressive, encompassing the world; a non-missionary church is in the bands of death.
To me this technical acceptation seems not applicable here, where we have to deal with the simplest moral precepts, and not with psychological niceties of Buddhist philosophy.
How mankind defers from day to day the best it can do, and the most beautiful things it can enjoy, without thinking that every day may be the last one, and that lost time is lost eternity!