No philosophy, no religion, has ever brought so glad a message to the world as this good news of Atheism.
ANNIE BESANTNo philosophy, no religion, has ever brought so glad a message to the world as this good news of Atheism.
ANNIE BESANTI will suggest that the great aim of our education is to bring out of the child who comes into our hands every faculty that he brings with him, and then to try to win that child to turn all his abilities, his powers, his capacities, to the helping and serving of the community which is a part.
ANNIE BESANTLiberty is a great celestial Goddess, strong, beneficent, and austere, and she can never descend upon a nation by the shouting of crowds, nor by arguments of unbridled passion, nor by the hatred of class against class.
ANNIE BESANTWhen we recognise that unity of all living things, then at once arises the question – how can we support this life of ours with least injury to the lives around us; how can we prevent our own life adding to the suffering of the world in which we live?
ANNIE BESANTThose 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 BESANTAs 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 BESANTThe true basis of morality is utility; that is, the adaptation of our actions to the promotion of the general welfare and happiness; the endeavour so to rule our lives that we may serve and bless mankind.
ANNIE BESANTAn 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 BESANTEvil is only imperfection, that which is not complete, which is becoming, but has not yet found its end.
ANNIE BESANTA myth is far truer than a history, for a history only gives a story of the shadows, whereas a myth gives a story of the substances that cast the shadows.
ANNIE BESANTNever yet has a God been defined in terms which were not palpably self-contradictory and absurd; never yet has a God been described so that a concept of Him was made possible to human thought.
ANNIE BESANTNever 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 BESANTThe highest Hindu intellectual training was based on the practice of yoga, and produced, as its fruit, those marvellous philosophical systems, the six Darshanas and the Brahma Sutras, which are still the delight of scholars and the inspiration of occultists and mystics.
ANNIE BESANTYou should always take a religion at its best and not at its worst, from its highest teachings and not from the lowest practices of some of its adherents.
ANNIE BESANTThe soul grows by reincarnation in bodies provided by nature, more complex, more powerful, as the soul unfolds greater and greater faculties. And so the soul climbs upward into the light eternal. And there is no fear for any child of man, for inevitably he climbs towards God.
ANNIE BESANTDeath cannot touch the higher consciousness of man it can only separate those who love each other so far as their lower vehicles are concerned; the man living on earth, blinded by matter, feels separated from those who have passed onwards, but there is no such thing as Death at all.
ANNIE BESANT