Death consists, indeed, in a repeated process of unrobing, or unsheathing. The immortal part of man shakes off from itself, one after the other, its outer casings, and – as the snake from its skin, the butterfly from its chrysalis – emerges from one after another, passing into a higher state of consciousness.
ANNIE BESANTWhat, after all, is the object of education? To train the body in health, vigor and grace, so that it may express the emotions in beauty and the mind with accuracy and strength.
More Annie Besant Quotes
-
-
There is no life without consciousness; there is no consciousness without life.
ANNIE BESANT -
Socialism is the ideal state, but it can never be achieved while man is so selfish.
ANNIE BESANT -
I was a wife and mother, blameless in moral life, with a deep sense of duty and a proud self-respect; it was while I was this that doubt struck me, and while I was in the guarded circle of the home, with no dream of outside work or outside liberty, that I lost all faith in Christianity.
ANNIE BESANT -
Thought creates character.
ANNIE BESANT -
Theosophy has no code of morals, being itself the embodiment of the highest morality; it presents to its students the highest moral teachings of all religions, gathering the most fragrant blossoms from the gardens of the world-faiths.
ANNIE BESANT -
Where love rules, laws are not needed.
ANNIE BESANT -
The world, with all its beauty, its happiness and suffering, its joys and pains, is planned with the utmost ingenuity, in order that the powers of the Self may be shown forth in manifestation.
ANNIE BESANT -
Never forget that life can only be nobly inspired and rightly lived if you take it bravely and gallantly, as a splendid adventure in which you are setting out into an unknown country, to face many a danger, to meet many a joy, to find many a comrade, to win and lose many a battle.
ANNIE BESANT -
No soul that aspires can ever fail to rise; no heart that loves can ever be abandoned. Difficulties exist only that in overcoming them we may grow strong, and they who have suffered are able to save.
ANNIE BESANT -
Knowledge is essential to conquest; only according to our ignorance are we helpless. Thought creates character. Character can dominate conditions. Will creates circumstances and environment.
ANNIE BESANT -
We learn much during our sleep, and the knowledge thus gained slowly filters into the physical brain, and is occasionally impressed upon it as a vivid and illuminative dream.
ANNIE BESANT -
Celibacy is not natural to men or to women; all bodily needs require their legitimate satisfaction, and celibacy is a disregard of natural law.
ANNIE BESANT -
Man is a spiritual intelligence, who has taken flesh with the object of gaining experience in worlds below the spiritual, in order that he may be able to master and to rule them, and in later ages take his place in the creative and directing hierarchies of the universe.
ANNIE BESANT -
Every person, every race, every nation, has its own particular keynote which it brings to the general chord of life and of humanity.
ANNIE BESANT -
Muhammadan law in its relation to women, is a pattern to European law. Look back to the history of Islam, and you will find that women have often taken leading places – on the throne, in the battle-field, in politics, in literature, poetry, etc.
ANNIE BESANT -
All men die. You may say: ‘Is that encouraging?’ Surely yes, for when a man dies, his blunders, which are of the form, all die with him, but the things in him that are part of the life never die, although the form be broken.
ANNIE BESANT -
Men are at every stage of evolution, from the most barbarous to the most developed; men are found of lofty intelligence, but also of the most unevolved mentality; in one place there is a highly developed and complex civilisation, in another a crude and simple polity.
ANNIE BESANT -
As the heat of the coal differs from the coal itself, so do memory, perception, judgment, emotion, and will, differ from the brain which is the instrument of thought.
ANNIE BESANT -
Nothing but an imperious intellectual and moral necessity can drive into doubt a religious mind, for it is as though an earthquake shook the foundations of the soul, and the very being quivers and sways under the shock.
ANNIE BESANT -
No philosophy, no religion, has ever brought so glad a message to the world as this good news of Atheism.
ANNIE BESANT -
An accurate knowledge of the past of a country is necessary for everyone who would understand its present, and who desires to judge of its future.
ANNIE BESANT -
Man peoples his current living space with a world of his own, crowded with the offspring of his fancies, desires, impulses, and passions.
ANNIE BESANT -
Those who can serve best, those who help most, those who sacrifice most, those are the people who will be loved in life and honoured in death, when all questions of colour are swept away and when in a free country free citizens shall meet on equal grounds.
ANNIE BESANT -
Refusal to believe until proof is given is a rational position; denial of all outside of our own limited experience is absurd.
ANNIE BESANT -
Theosophy tries to bridge the gulf between Buddhism and Christianity by pointing to the fundamental spiritual truths on which both religions are built, and by winning people to regard the Buddha and the Christ as fellow-laborers, and not as rivals.
ANNIE BESANT -
A common religion is not possible for India, but a recognition of a common basis for all religions, and the growth of a liberal, tolerant spirit in religious matters, are possible.
ANNIE BESANT