50+ Annie Besant Quotes | Minimalist Quotes

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 BESANT

Death Immortal Man Repeat Skin
Strange indeed would it be if all the space around us be empty, mere waste void, and the inhabitants of Earth the only forms in which intelligence could clothe itself.
ANNIE BESANT

Clothes Earth Herself Intelligence Space Strange
Better remain silent, better not even think, if you are not prepared to act.
ANNIE BESANT

Act Better Preparation Silence Thinking Yourself
No durable things are built on violent passion. Nature grows her plants in silence and in darkness, and only when they have become strong do they put their heads above the ground.
ANNIE BESANT

Build Darkness Growth Nature Passion Plant Silence Strong Violence
Liberty 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 BESANT

Argument God Greatness Hate Liberty Nation Passion Strong
You 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 BESANT

Best Practice Religion Teaching Worst Yourself
Refusal to believe until proof is given is a rational position; denial of all outside of our own limited experience is absurd.
ANNIE BESANT

Believe Evidence Experience Limitation Logic Mad Ourselves Position
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

Desire Live Man Passion People Space World
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

Faith Garden Moral Present Religion Student Teaching World
The misery we inflict on sentient beings slackens our human evolution.
ANNIE BESANT

Evolution Human Misery Ourselves
Beauty is no dead thing. It is the manifestation of God in nature. There is not one object in nature untouched by man that is not beautiful, for God’s manifestation is beauty. It shines through all His works, and not only in those that may give pleasure to man.
ANNIE BESANT

Beautiful Death God Happiness Himself Man Nature Shine Touch Work
Where love rules, laws are not needed.
ANNIE BESANT

Law Love Need Rule
Purification is but the cleaning of the lamp-glass which hides the Light.
ANNIE BESANT

Hide Light Purity
When 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 BESANT

Injury Life Live Question Recognition Suffering Unity World
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.
ANNIE BESANT

God Human Mad Possible Thinking
I often think that woman is more free in Islam than in Christianity. Woman is more protected by Islam than by the faith which preaches monogamy. In AI Quran the law about woman is juster and more liberal.
ANNIE BESANT

Freedom Justice Law Liberty Protection Religious Right Woman
For centuries the leaders of Christian thought spoke of women as a necessary evil, and the greatest saints of the Church are those who despise women the most.
ANNIE BESANT

Evil Greatness Hate Leadership Woman
The man of meditation is the man who wastes no time, scatters no energy, misses no opportunity.
ANNIE BESANT

Energy Man Meditation Missing Opportunity Wasted Time
The 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 BESANT

Ability Body Born Children God Greatness Growth Light Man Nature Soul
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

Break Death Encouragement Life Man Mistake Spiritual
Death 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

Death Feeling Live Love Man Separate Touch
Thought creates character.
ANNIE BESANT

Character Creation One Liner Thinking
No philosophy, no religion, has ever brought so glad a message to the world as this good news of Atheism.
ANNIE BESANT

Atheist Goodness Happiness Philosophy Religion World
The essence of religion is the knowledge of God which is eternal life. That and nothing less than that is religion. Everything else is on the surface, is superfluous save for the needs of men.
ANNIE BESANT

Forever God Knowledge Life Man Need Religion
What, 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.
ANNIE BESANT

Beautiful Body Education Emotion Expression Health Strength Training
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

Body Law Man Nature Need Satisfaction
Evil is only imperfection, that which is not complete, which is becoming, but has not yet found its end.
ANNIE BESANT

End Evil Imperfection

Annie Besant Quotes

Famous British activists