“It is almost impossible to exaggerate the proneness of the human mind to take miracles as evidence, and to seek for miracles as evidence.”

For the creation of a masterwork of literature two powers must concur, the power of the man and the power of the moment, and the man is not enough without the moment.

The brave, impetuous heart yields everywhere to the subtle, contriving head.

They… who await. No gifts from Chance, have conquered Fate.

Fate gave, what Chance shall not control, His sad lucidity of soul.

All knowledge is interesting to a wise man, and the knowledge of nature is interesting to all men.

Men of culture are the true apostles of equality

The grand stye arises in poetry, when a noble nature, poetically gifted, treats with simplicity or with severity a serious subject.

Whoever sets himself to see things as they are will find himself one of a very small circle but it is only by this small circle resolutely doing its own work that adequate ideas will ever get current at all.

I am bound by my own definition of criticism : a disinterested endeavour to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world.

I keep saying, Shakespeare, Shakespeare, you are as obscure as life is.

It is – last stage of all When we are frozen up within, and quite The phantom of ourselves To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost Which blamed the living man

This strange disease of modern life, With its sick hurry, its divided aims.

Nature’s great law, and the law of all men’s minds? To its own impulse every creature stirs: Live by thy light, and Earth will live by hers.

The need of expansion is as genuine an instinct in man as the need in a plant for the light, or the need in man himself for going upright. The love of liberty is simply the instinct in man for expansion.

Art still has truth. Take refuge there.

Genius is mainly an affair of energy.

The misery we inflict on sentient beings slackens our human evolution.

A Hindu is interested in the welfare of all: not merely humans, but all living beings.

Human rights are fundamental rights, they are the minimum, the very least we demand. Too often, they become the goal itself. What should be the minimum becomes the maximum – all we are supposed to expect – but human rights aren’t enough. The goal is, and must always be, justice.

Never 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.

The savior who wants to turn men into angels is as much a hater of human nature as the totalitarian despot who wants to turn them into puppets.

Through fasting. . .I have found a perfect health, a new state of existence, a feeling of purity and happiness, something unknown to humans.

Science without discrimination Human existence without discipline Friendship without gratitude Music without melody A society without morality and justice Cannot be of benefit to the people.

You deal. You survive. You grow up and you build a career. And you remember these big/little hardships. They make you human.