"The most important of all outstanding facts of Iranian history is the religious reform brought about by Zarathustra. There can be hardly any question that he was the first man we know who gave a definitely moral character and direction to religion and at the same time preached the doctrine of monotheism which offered an eternal foundation of reality to goodness as an ideal of perfection."

"The development of intelligence and physical power is equally necessary in animals and men for their purposes of living; but what is unique in man is the development of his consciousness which gradually deepens and widens the realization of his immortal being, the perfect, the eternal."

"We have our eyes, which relate to us the vision of the physical universe. We have also an inner faculty of our own which helps us to find our relationship with the supreme self of man, the universe of personality. This faculty is our luminous imagination, which in its higher stage is special to man.Tf offers us that vision of wholeness which for the biological necessity of physical survival is superfluous ; its purpose is to arouse in us the sense of perfection which is our true sense of immortality."

"Source: *Wit and Wisdom of Gandhi, Nehru, Tagore* (1968) quoting Tagore"

"You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water."

"Let this be my last word, that I trust in thy love."

"Clouds come floating into my life from other days no longer to shed rain or usher storm but to give colour to my sunset sky."

"When I stand before thee at the day's end thou shalt see my scars and know that I had my wounds and also my healing."

"Let the dead have the immortality of fame, but the living the immortality of love."

"WE live in this world when we love it."

"Death belongs to life as birth does. The walk is in the raising of the foot as in the laying of it down."

"Do not say, "It is morning," and dismiss it with a name of yesterday. See it for the first time as a new-born child that has no name."

"Those who have everything but thee, my God, laugh at those who have nothing but thyself."

"The fountain of death makes the still water of life play."

"Men are cruel, but Man is kind."

"Night's darkness is a bag that bursts with the gold of the dawn."

"Praise shames me, for I secretly beg for it."

"A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it."

"He who is too busy doing good finds no time to be good."

"The water in a vessel is sparkling; the water in the sea is dark. The small truth has words that are clear; the great truth has great silence."

"When we rejoice in our fulness, then we can part with our fruits with joy."

"Time is the wealth of change, but the clock in its parody makes it mere change and no wealth."

"The roots below the earth claim no rewards for making the branches fruitful."

"If you shut your door to all errors truth will be shut out."

"Asks the Possible to the Impossible, "Where is your dwelling place?" "In the dreams of the impotent," comes the answer."

"To be outspoken is easy when you do not wait to speak the complete truth."

"Man goes into the noisy crowd to drown his own clamour of silence."

"He who wants to do good knocks at the gate; he who loves finds the gate open."

"Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man."

"We read the world wrong and say that it deceives us."

"Never be afraid of the moments—thus sings the voice of the everlasting."

"We come nearest to the great when we are great in humility."

"Life is given to us, we earn it by giving it."

"Your idol is shattered in the dust to prove that God's dust is greater than your idol."

"God finds himself by creating."

"The fish in the water is silent, the animal on the earth is noisy, the bird in the air is singing, But Man has in him the silence of the sea, the noise of the earth and the music of the air."

"That I exist is a perpetual surprise which is life."

"If you shed tears when you miss the sun, you also miss the stars."

"To Indians the idea of the transmigration of the soul from animal to man, and man to animal, does not seem strange, and so from our scriptures pity for all sentient creatures has not been banished as a sentimental exaggeration. When I am in close touch with Nature in the country, the Indian in me asserts itself and I cannot remain coldly indifferent to the abounding joy of life throbbing within the soft down-covered breast of a single tiny bird."

"I saw, all of a sudden, an odd-looking bird making its way through the water to the opposite bank, followed by a great commotion. I found it was a domestic fowl which had managed to escape impending doom in the galley by jumping overboard and was now trying frantically to swim across. It had almost gained the bank when the clutches of its relentless pursuers closed on it, and it was brought back in triumph, gripped by the neck. I told the cook I would not have any meat for dinner. I really must give up animal food. We manage to swallow flesh only because we do not think of the cruel and sinful thing we do. There are many crimes which are the creation of man himself, the wrongfulness of which is put down to their divergence from habit, custom, or tradition. But cruelty is not of these. It is a fundamental sin, and admits of no argument or nice distinctions. If only we do not allow our heart to grow callous, its protest against cruelty is always clearly heard; and yet we go on perpetrating cruelties easily, merrily, all of us ⎯ in fact, any one who does not join in is dubbed a crank. … if, after our pity is aroused, we persist in throttling our feelings simply in order to join others in their preying upon life, we insult all that is good in us. I have decided to try a vegetarian diet."

"Reason tells us that creation never can be perfectly happy. So long as it is incomplete it must put up with imperfection and sorrow. It can only be perfect when it ceases to be creation, and is God. Do our prayers dare go so far?"

"It sometimes strikes me how immensely fortunate I am that each day should take its place in my life, either reddened with the rising and setting sun, or refreshingly cool with deep, dark clouds, or blooming like a white flower in the moonlight. What untold wealth!"

"One of the many suppressed longings of creation which cry after fulfilment is for neglected joys within reach; while we are busy pursuing chimerical impossibilities we famish our lives...The emptiness left by easy joys, untasted, is ever growing in my life. And the day may come when I shall feel that, could I but have the past back, I would strive no more after the unattainable, but drain to the full these little, unsought, everyday joys which life offers."

"The world is ever new to me; like an old friend loved through this and former lives, the acquaintance between us is both long and deep."

"When sorrow is deepest...then the surface crust is pierced, and consolation wells up, and all the forces of patience and courage are banded together to do their duty. Thus great suffering brings with it the power of great endurance. So while we are cowards before petty troubles, great sorrows make us brave by rousing our truer manhood."

"Every person is worthy of an infinite wealth of love — the beauty of his soul knows no limit."

"The light of the stars travels millions of miles to reach the earth, but it cannot reach our hearts — so many millions of miles further off are we!"

"This "I" of mine toils hard, day and night, for a home which it knows as its own. Alas, there will be no end of its sufferings so long as it is not able to call this home thine. Till then it will struggle on, and its heart will ever cry, "Ferryman, lead me across." When this home of mine is made thine, that very moment is it taken across, even while its old walls enclose it. This "I" is restless. It is working for a gain which can never be assimilated with its spirit, which it never can hold and retain. In its efforts to clasp in its own arms that which is for all, it hurts others and is hurt in its turn, and cries, "Lead me across". But as soon as it is able to say, "All my work is thine," everything remains the same, only it is taken across. Where can I meet thee unless in this mine home made thine? Where can I join thee unless in this my work transformed into thy work? If I leave my home I shall not reach thy home; if I cease my work I can never join thee in thy work. For thou dwellest in me and I in thee. Thou without me or I without thee are nothing."

"Indeed, the realisation of the paramātman, the supreme soul, within our antarātman, our inner individual soul, is in a state of absolute completion. We cannot think of it as non-existent and depending on our limited powers for its gradual construction. If our relation with the divine were all a thing of our own making, how should we rely on it as true, and how should it lend us support? Yes, we must know that within us we have that where space and time cease to rule and where the links of evolution are merged in unity. In that everlasting abode of the ātaman, the soul, the revelation of the paramātman, the supreme soul, is already complete. Therefore the Upanishads say: He who knows Brahman, the true, the all-conscious, and the infinite as hidden in the depths of the soul, which is the supreme sky (the inner sky of consciousness), enjoys all objects of desire in union with the all-knowing Brahman."

"Knowledge is partial, because our intellect is an instrument, it is only a part of us, it can give us information about things which can be divided and analysed, and whose properties can be classified part by part. But Brahma is perfect, and knowledge which is partial can never be a knowledge of him."