Chronologically Ordered Theme Pages To Be Converted To Alphabetical Ordering

"The objective of all human arrangements is through distracting one’s thoughts to cease to be aware of life."

"Theosophy brought to India yet another strain of sarva-dharma-samabhâva. It proclaimed that all religions were ultimately derived from and were distortions of the Original One Religion known to the ancient Mahatmas, who had kept themselves hidden for a long time. But so far as the prevalent religions are concerned, Theosophy never said that they were the same or equally true. In fact, the first Theosophists who came to South India showed a marked preference for Hinduism, and encouraged Hindus to ridicule and denounce Christianity, its totem, and its missions. Later on, Annie Besant founded the first Hindu College at Varanasi, and could never see eye to eye with Mahatma Gandhi when it came to Islam."

"Theosophy is the teaching of Madame Blavatsky. It is Hinduism at its best. Theosophy is the Brotherhood of Man. … Jinnah and other Moslem leaders were once members of the Congress. They left it because they felt the pinch of Hinduism patronizing. … They did not find the Brotherhood of Man among the Hindus. They say Islam is the Brotherhood of Man. As a matter of fact, it is the Brotherhood of Moslems. Theosophy is the Brotherhood of Man."

"We have not yet clearly grasped the fact that Western Theosophy is an amateurish imitation of the East."

"What then is Theosophy? It is the formulated system of natural Religion-Philosophy-Science, embracing the verities of infinite Nature, and teaching therefore of the structure, operations, and laws of Nature as they have been and are visioned, seen, experienced, witnessed by all the great Sages and Seers of the past and present."

"I recall having read, at the brothers’ direction Madame Blavatsky’s Key to Theosophy. This book stimulated in me the desire to read books on Hinduism, and disabused me of the notion fostered by the missionaries that Hinduism was rife with superstition."

"F.T. Brooks left a deep impress upon me and I feel that I owe a debt to him and to Theosophy."

"Theosophy seeks to develop the human nature in man in addition to the animal, and at the sacrifice of the superfluous animality which modern life and materialistic teachings have developed to a degree which is abnormal for the human being at this stage of his progress."

"Our age, we say, is inferior in Wisdom to any other, because it professes, more visibly every day, contempt for truth and justice, without which there can be no Wisdom. Because our civilization, built up of shams and appearances, is at best like a beautiful green morass, a bog, spread over a deadly quagmire. Because this century of culture and worship of matter, while offering prizes and premiums for every "best thing" under the Sun, from the biggest baby and the largest orchid down to the strongest pugilist and the fattest pig, has no encouragement to offer to morality; no prize to give for any moral virtue."

"Theosophy is Divine Knowledge or Science..."

"Of the Absolute, the Infinite, the All-embracing, we can at our present stage know nothing, except that It is; we can say nothing that is not a limitation, and therefore inaccurate."

"There is no religion higher than truth."

"The United States ... celebrates rote vocational training and the singular, amoral skill of making money. It churns out stunted human products, lacking the capacity and vocabulary to challenge the assumptions and structures of the corporate state. It funnels them into a caste system of drones and systems managers. It transforms a democratic state into a feudal system of corporate masters and serfs."

"The young are of age when they twitter like the old; they are driven through school to learn the old song, and, when they have this by heart, they are declared of age."

"As soon as a thought or word becomes a tool, one can dispense with actually ‘thinking’ it, that is, with going through the logical acts involved in verbal formulation of it. As has been pointed out, often and correctly, the advantage of mathematics—the model of all neo-positivistic thinking—lies in just this ‘intellectual economy.’ Complicated logical operations are carried out without actual performance of the intellectual acts upon which the mathematical and logical symbols are based. … Reason … becomes a fetish, a magic entity that is accepted rather than intellectually experienced."

"The largest library in disorder is not so useful as a smaller but orderly one; in the same way the greatest amount of knowledge, if it has not been worked out in one's own mind, is of less value than a much smaller amount that has been fully considered. For it is only when a man combines what he knows from all sides, and compares one truth with another, that he completely realises his own knowledge and gets it into his power. A man can only think over what he knows, therefore he should learn something; but a man only knows what he has pondered."

"For to occupy every spare moment in reading, and to do nothing but read, is even more paralysing to the mind than constant manual labour, which at least allows those engaged in it to follow their own thoughts."

"Truth that has been merely learned is like an artificial limb, a false tooth, a waxen nose; at best, like a nose made out of another’s flesh; it adheres to us only because it is put on. But truth acquired by thinking of our own is like a natural limb; it alone really belongs to us. This is the fundamental difference between the thinker and the mere man of learning."

"I took the right road to life by conquering it with every step instead of taking possession of it as a tradition for which the young mind has no use. Adults who still derive childlike pleasure from hanging the gifts of a ready-made education on the Christmas tree of a child waiting outside the door to life do not realize how unreceptive they are making children to everything that constitutes the surprise of life."

"The fact narrated must correspond to something in me to be credible or intelligible. We, as we read, must become Greeks, Romans, Turks, priest and kind, martyr and executioner, must fasten the images to some reality in our secret experience, or we shall learn nothing rightly."

"The abuse of books kills science. Believing that we know what we have read, we believe that we can dispense with learning it."

"The manner of study in ancient times differed from that of the modern age in that the former was the proper and complete formation of the natural consciousness. Putting itself to the test at every point of its existence, and philosophizing about everything it came across, it made itself into a universality that was active through and through. In modern times, however, the individual finds the abstract form ready-made; the effort to grasp and appropriate it is more the direct driving-forth of what is within and the truncated generation of the universal than it is the emergence of the latter from the concrete variety of existence."

"What a pity it is that ... tutors, both in public and private seminaries of learning, should forget that the forming the manners is more necessary to a finished education than furnishing the minds of youth."

"It is certainly not a matter of indifference whether I learn something without effort or finally arrive at it myself through my system of thought. In the latter case everything has roots, in the former it is merely superficial."

"The bookful blockhead ignorantly read,"

"Frequently, when a person is most convinced that he has understood himself, he is assaulted by the uneasy feeling that he has really only learned someone else’s life by rote."

"To cultivate the memory we should confide to it only what we understand and love: the rest is a useless burden; for simply to know by rote is not to know at all."

"We work merely to fill the memory, leaving the understanding empty."

"Nothing taught by force stays in the soul."

"Learned we may be with another man’s learning: we can only be wise with wisdom of our own."

"Learning without thought is labor lost."

"The Lord said: … These people draw near with their mouths and honor me with the lips while their hearts are far from me, and their worship of me is a human commandment learned by rote."

"There is frequently more to be learn'd from the unexpected questions of a child than the discourses of men, who talk in a road, according to the notions they have borrowed, and the prejudices of their education."

"What the learned world tends to offer is one second-hand scrap of information illustrating ideas derived from another second-hand scrap of information. The second-handedness of the learned world is the secret of its mediocrity."

"A learned coxcomb dyeth his mistakes in so much a deeper colour: a wrong kind of learning serveth only to embroider his errors."

"Deep down, I’m really superficial. And don’t get me wrong. You’re cute but… you’re a nobody."

"Among the superficial, if you are not one of them, one of them has to lead you by the hand."

"The superficiality of the American is the result of his hustling. It needs leisure to think things out; it needs leisure to mature. People in a hurry cannot think, cannot grow, nor can they decay. They are preserved in a state of perpetual puerility."

"Generally, we are more concerned with handling and using things than with knowing them in their true nature. Thus we usually grasp in haste the very first few signals conveyed to us by a perception. Then, through deeply ingrained habit, those signals evoke a standard response by way of judgements such as good-bad, pleasant-unpleasant, useful-harmful, right-wrong. ... A world perceived in this superficial way will consist of shapeless little lumps of experiences marked by a few subjectively selected signs or symbols. The symbols chosen are determined mainly by the individual’s self-interest; sometimes they are even misapplied. The shadow-like world that results includes not only the outer environment and other persons, but also a good part of one’s own bodily and mental processes. These, too, become subjected to the same superficial manner of conceptualization."

"I was no longer superficial—I had stopped thinking."

"My grandparents found reasons for the existence of their family and the fulfillment of their duties in serious writings, and they interpreted their special sufferings with respect to a great and ennobling past. … There was a respect for real learning, because it had a felt connection with their lives. … I do not believe that my generation, my cousins who have been educated in the American way, all of whom are M.D.s or Ph.D.s, have any comparable learning. When they talk about heaven and earth, the relations between men and women, parents and children, the human condition, I hear nothing but clichés, superficialities, the material of satire."

"You are surprised that I should be unhappy when I can dance and am so sure of myself in the superficial things of life. And I, my friend, am surprised that you are so disillusioned with life when you are at home with the very things in it that are the deepest and most beautiful, spirit, art, and thought! That is why we were drawn to one another."

"It is time to acknowledge that light-hearted superficiality has done us no good."

"The learning of the gentleman enters through his ears, fastens to his heart, spreads through his four limbs, and manifests itself in his actions. ... The learning of the petty person enters through his ears and passes out his mouth. From mouth to ears is only four inches—how could it be enough to improve a whole body much larger than that?"

"The vicious lover is the follower of earthly Love who desires the body rather than the soul; his heart is set on what is mutable and must therefore be inconstant. And as soon as the body he loves begins to pass the first flower of its beauty, he "spreads his wings and flies away," giving the lie to all his pretty speeches and dishonoring his vows, whereas the lover whose heart is touched by moral beauties is constant all his life, for he has become one with what will never fade."

"It is certainly not a matter of indifference whether I learn something without effort or finally arrive at it myself through my system of thought. In the latter case everything has roots, in the former it is merely superficial."

"Everyone who flees from what is superficially good and follows what is reckoned hard and foolish finds happiness awaiting him. For Vice, veiling her actions in the beauties which properly belong to Virtue and are genuine, enslaves groveling people."

"Now those who take a superficial and unreflecting view of things observe the outward appearance of anything they meet, e.g. of a man, and then trouble themselves no more about him. The view they have taken of the bulk of his body is enough to make them think that they know all about him. But the penetrating and scientific mind will not trust to the eyes alone the task of taking the measure of reality; it will not stop at appearances, nor count that which is not seen among unrealities. It inquires into the qualities of the man's soul."

"Listen then to what the parable of the sower means: ... The seed falling on rocky ground refers to someone who hears the word and at once receives it with joy. But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away."

"It is certainly better not to have studied a subject at all than to have studied it superficially. For when the unaided healthy common sense seeks to form an opinion of something it does not go so far wrong as semi-erudition does."