"May you purify my speech. May you purify my breath. May you purify my eye. May you purify my ear ... May your mind be abundant. May your speech be abundant. May your breath be abundant (SYV Ill. 14-5)."

"Om, you for vigor, you for energy, you are breaths, may the God Savitar propel you to the most glorious action (SYV I.1)."

"The birthplace of the horse, indeed, is the sea, its kindred is the sea."

"The four and thirty ribs of the strong steed, Kin of the gods, the axe meeteth; Skilfully do ye make the joints faultless; Declaring each part, do ye cut it asunder."

"The Vajasaneyi Samhita also has miscellaneous historically significant references. Some sort of barter is implied by VS. Book III which is addressed to Indra: ìTo me present thy merchandize, and I to thee will give my wares ... O Satakratu, let us twain barter, like goods, our food and strength.î Book X (VS) prays for the bestowal of kingship to Varuna and Mitra, and XI (VS) prefers to put the burglars, thieves and robbers and criminals in the mouth of Agni or fire. Remarkably charming is the following description of the ploughing operation (Book XII, VS): Happily let the shares turn up the ploughland, happily go the ploughers with the oxen! / ... The keen-shared plough that bringeth bliss, good for the Soma-drinkerís need/ Shear out for me a cow, a sheep, a rapid drawer of the car, a blooming woman, plump and strong. Book XXIX (VS) has an evocative and graphic allusion to battles (also TS IV.6.6): ... She whispers like a womanóthis bow-string that preserves us in the combat/... slung on the back, pouring his brood, the quiver vanishes all opposing ... armies. Upstanding in the car the skilful charioteer guides his strong horses on whithersoíer he will. See and admire the strength of those controlling rains ... horses whose hoofs rain dust are neighing loudly, yoked to the chariots, showing forth their vigour. With their forefeet descending on the foemen, they, never flinching, trample and destroy them."

"Remember that once upon a time there was nothing on this earth, neither trees and plants, nor even mountains. For a period of eleven thousand [great] years the earth was covered by lava. In those days there was neither day nor night below the polar region: for in the rest of the earth neither the sun nor the moon shone. Only one half of the polar region was illumined. [Later] apart from the polar region the rest of the earth was covered with water. And then for a very long time the whole earth was covered with forests, except the polar region. Then there arose great mountains, but without any human inhabitants. For a period of ten thousand years the earth was covered with the corpses of the asuras."

"For the Veda is tainted by three faults of untruth, self-contradiction, and tautology; then again the impostors who call themselves Vaidic pundits are mutually destructive, as the authority of the Jnan-Kanda is overthrown by those who maintain the authority of the Karma-Kanda and those who maintain the authority of the Jnan-Kanda reject that of the Karma-Kanda; and lastly, the three Vedas themselves are only the incoherent rhapsodies of knaves and to this effect runs the popular saying: “The Agnihotra, the three Vedas, the ascetic, three staves, and smearing oneself with ashes,” Brihaspati says, “these are but means of livelihood for those who have no manliness nor sense.""

"The Vedas haunt me. In them I have found eternal compensation, unfathomable power, unbroken peace."

"Modern Philology is an immense advance on anything we have had before the nineteenth century. It has introduced a spirit of order and method in place of mere phantasy; it has given us more correct ideas of the morphology of language and of what is or is not possible in etymology. It has established a few rules which govern the detrition of language and guide us in the identification of the same word or of related words as they appear in the changes of different but kindred tongues. Here, however, its achievements cease. The high hopes which attended its birth have not been fulfilled by its maturity. There is, in fact, no real certainty as yet in the obtained results of Philology. . . . Yesterday we were all convinced that Varuna was identical with Ouranos, the Greek heaven; today this identity is denounced to us as a philological error; tomorrow it may be rehabilitated. . . . We have to recognize in fact that European scholarship in its dealings with the Veda has derived an excessive prestige from its association in the popular mind with the march of European science. The truth is that there is an enormous gulf between the patient, scrupulous and exact physical sciences and these other brilliant, but immature branches of learning upon which Vedic scholarship relies."

"According to Aurobindo (1956): In ancient times the Veda was revered as a sacred book of wisdom, a great mass of inspired poetry, the work of Rishis, seers and sages. . . . Truth . . . not of an ordinary but of a divine inspiration and source. Is this all legend and moonshine, or a groundless and even nonsensical tradition? . . . The European scholars . . . went on to make their own etymological explanation of the words, or build up their own conjectural meanings of the Vedic verses and gave a new presentation often arbitrary and imaginative. What they sought for in the Veda was the early history of India, its society, institutions, customs, a civilisation- picture of the times. They invented the theory based on the difference of languages of an Aryan invasion from the north. . . . The Vedic religion was in this account only a worship of Nature-Gods full of solar myths and consecrated by sacrifices and a sacrificial liturgy primitive enough in its ideas and contents, and it is these barbaric prayers that are the much vaunted, haloed and apotheosized Veda."

"I find that Shankara had grasped much of Vedantic truth, but that much was dark to him. I am bound to admit what he realised; I am not bound to exclude what he failed to realise. Aptavakyam, authority, is one kind of proof; it is not the only kind: pratyaksa [direct knowledge] is more important. (...) It is irrelevant to me what Max Müller thinks of the Veda or what Sayana thinks of the Veda. I should prefer to know what the Veda has to say for itself and, if there is any light there on the unknown or on the infinite, to follow the ray till I come face to face with that which it illumines. Europe has formed certain views about the Veda and the Vedanta, and succeeded in imposing them on the Indian intellect.... When a hundred world-famous scholars cry out, “This is so”, it is hard indeed for the average mind, and even minds above the average but inexpert in these special subjects not to acquiesce.... Nevertheless a time must come when the Indian mind will shake off the darkness that has fallen upon it, cease to think or hold opinions at second and third hand and reassert its right to judge and enquire in a perfect freedom into the meaning of its own Scriptures. When that day comes we shall, I think, discover that the imposing fabric of Vedic theory is based upon nothing more sound or true than a foundation of loosely massed conjectures. We shall question many established philological myths,—the legend, for instance, of an Aryan invasion of India from the north, the artificial and inimical distinction of Aryan and Dravidian which an erroneous philology has driven like a wedge into the unity of the homogenous Indo-Afghan race; the strange dogma of a “henotheistic” Vedic naturalism; the ingenious and brilliant extravagances of the modern sun and star myth weavers. (...) Verification by experience and experiment is the only standard of truth, not antiquity, not modernity. Some of the ideas of the ancients or even of the savage now scouted by us may be lost truths or statements of valid experience from which we have turned or become oblivious; many of the notions of the modern schoolmen will certainly in the future be scouted as erroneous and superstitious. (...) Western Philology has converted it [the word arya] into a racial term, an unknown ethnological quantity on which different speculations fix different values.... [But] in the Veda the Aryan peoples are those who had accepted a particular type of self-culture, of inward and outward practice, of ideality, of aspiration.... Whoever seeks to climb from level to level up the hill of the divine, fearing nothing, deterred by no retardation or defeat, shrinking from no vastness because it is too vast for his intelligence, no height because it is too high for his spirit, no greatness because it is too great for his force and courage, he is the Aryan, the divine fighter and victor, the noble man."

"The people sing reverent praise to Thee (Indra) for strength: With terrors trouble Thou the foe"

"I can venture to affirm, without meaning to pluck a leaf from the never-fading laurels of our immortal Newton, that the whole of his theology, and part of his philosophy, may be found in the Vedas."

"Anything can be believed if one cites the authority of the Veda, if one takes some passage from the Veda, juggles it, gives it the most impossible meaning and murders everything reasonable in it. If one presents one’s own ideas as ideas meant in the Vedas, “all fools will follow me in a crowd.”"

"The Vedas "were undoubtedly the first monument of the world"."

"The Veda was the most precious gift for which the West had ever been indebted to the East."

"Vedas are the most rewarding and the most elevating book which can be possible in the world."

"Access to the Vedas is the greatest privilege this century may claim over all previous centuries."

"There is a no monument of Greece or Rome more previous than the Rig Veda."

"“With God, nothing is impossible”, the Christian thinks. But the Indian says: With piety and knowledge of the Veda, nothing is impossible: the gods are submissive and obedient to them. Where is the god who can resist the pious earnestness and prayer of a renouncing ascetic in the forest?"

"Whatever may be the date of the Vedic hymns, whether 1500 B.C.E. or 15,000 B.C.E., they have their own unique place and stand by themselves in the literature of the world. They tell us something of the early growth of the human mind of which we find no trace anywhere else."

"The Rig-Veda, the first of the Vedas, is probably the earliest book that humanity possesses. In it we find the first outpourings of the human mind, the glow of poetry, the rapture at nature's loveliness and mystery."

"There is more real antiquity in the Veda than in all the inscriptions of Egypt or Ninevah . . . old thoughts, old hopes, old faith, and old errors, the old Man altogether. (Müller 1895: 1.75–76)"

"If I were to look over the whole world to find out the country most richly endowed with all the wealth, power and beauty that nature can bestow — in some parts a very paradise on earth — I should point to India. If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most fully developed the choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered on the greatest problems of life, and has found solution of some of them which well deserve the attention even of those who have studied Plato and Kant-I should point to India. And if I were to ask myself from what literature we here in Europe, we who have been nurtured almost exclusively on the thought of Greeks and Romans, and of one Semitic race, the Jewish, may draw that corrective which is most wanted in order to make our inner life more perfect, more comprehensive, more universal, in fact more truly human, a life not for this life only, but a transfigured and eternal life-again I should point to India."

"In the Rig-Veda we shall have before us more real antiquity than in all the inscriptions of Egypt or Ninevah....the Veda is the oldest book in existence..."

"One sentence of Vedas is worth the State of Massachusetts many times over."

"What extracts from the Vedas I have read fall on me like the light of a higher and purer luminary, which describes a loftier course through a purer stratum. It rises on me like the full moon after the stars have come out, wading through some far stratum in the sky."

"Whenever I have read any part of the Vedas, I have felt that some unearthly and unknown light illuminated me. In the great teaching of the Vedas, there is no touch of the sectarianism. It is of ages, climes, and nationalities and is the royal road for the attainment of the Great Knowledge. When I am at it, I feel that I am under the spangled heavens of a summer night."

"The whole character of these compositions and the circumstances under which, from internal evidence, they appear to have arisen, are in harmony with the supposition that they were nothing more than the natural expression of the personal hopes and feelings of those ancient bards of whom they were first recited. In these songs the Aryan sages celebrated the praises of their ancestral gods (while at the same time they sought to conciliate their goodwill by a variety of oblations supposed to be acceptable to them), and besought of them all the blessings which men in general desired—health, wealth, long life, cattle, offspring, victory over their enemies, foregiveness of sin, and in some cases also celestial felicity."

"It is sinful to even see the face of a man who does not feel his friend's pain. Treat your own mountain-like pain as though it were a speck. Treat your friend's speck-like pain as though it were a mountain."

"Once war has been undertaken, no peace is made by pretending there is no war."

"Do not do to another what is disagreeable to yourself: this is the summary Law."

"Senses out of control suffice to bring one to grief, as untrained and disobedient horses bring a driver to grief on the road. A fool who, guided by his senses, sees profit arising from the unprofitable and the unprofitable from profit mistakes misery for happiness."

"A chariot, king, is a person's body: The soul is the driver, the senses his horses; Undistracted by his fine horses a driver Who is skilled rides happily, if they are trained."

"People are plagued by their senses if they act without restraint to attain their desires. ... If one is dragged along as the victim of his natural five senses, his adversities wax like the moon in the bright fortnight."

"The intoxication with power is worse than drunkenness with liquor and such, for he who is drunk with power does not come to his senses before he falls."

"The poor always eat better: hunger sweetens their dishes, and that is rare among the rich. It is generally found in the world that the rich have no appetite, but the poor, O Indra of kings, digest even wood."

"AUM! I bow down to Narayana and Nara, the most exalted Purusha, and to the Devi Saraswati, and utter the word Jaya. Ugrasrava is the son of Romaharshana; he is a Suta and a master of the Puranas. One day, bowing reverently, he came to the great Rishis of flinchless austerity... The Munis were eager to listen to the marvellous legends of Ugrasrava, who had come to their asrama in the forest. The holy ones welcomed him with respect. He greeted those Sages with folded hands and inquired after the evolution of their tapasya."

"अक्रोधेन जयेत्क्रोधमसाधुं साधुना जयेत् । जयेत्कदर्यं दानेन जयेत्सत्येन चानृतम् ॥"

"निर्वनो वध्यते व्याघ्रो निर्व्याघ्रं छिद्यते वनम् ।तस्माद्व्याघ्रो वनं रक्षेद्वनं व्याघ्रं च पालयेत् ॥"

"Be he ever so wise and strong, wealth confounds a man. In my view, anyone living in comfort fails to reason."

"A gray head does not make an elder. The Gods know him to be an elder who knows, be he a child. Not by years, not by gray hairs, not by riches or many relations did the seers make the Law: "He is great to us who has learning.""

"And when those terrible times will be over, the creation will begin anew. And men will again be created and distributed.. and about that time, in order that men may increase, Providence, according to its pleasure, will once more become propitious... And the clouds will commence to shower seasonably, and the stars and stellar conjunctions will become auspicious. And the planets, duly revolving in their orbits, will become exceedingly propitious. And all around, there will be prosperity and abundance and health and peace...."

"Friends and relatives and kinsmen will perform friendly offices for the sake of the wealth only that is possessed by a person... When the end of the Yuga comes, men abandoning the countries and directions and towns and cities of their occupation, will seek for new ones, one after another. And people will wander over the earth, uttering, 'O father, O son', and such other frightful and rending cries."

"And cowards will have the reputation of bravery and the brave will be cheerless like cowards... men will cease to trust one another... full of avarice... sin will increase and prosper, while virtue will fade and cease to flourish. And Brahmanas and Kshatriyas and Vaisyas will disappear, leaving, O king, no remnants of their orders... Jealousy and malice will fill the world. And no one will, at that time, be a giver (of wealth or anything else) in respect to any one else... Men will... become omnivorous without distinction, and cruel in all their acts... Urged by avarice, men will, at that time, deceive one another when they sell and purchase. And when the end of the Yuga comes, urged by their very dispositions, men will act cruelly, and speak ill of one another.. people will, without compunction, destroy trees and gardens. And men will be filled with anxiety as regards the means of living... overwhelmed with covetousness, men will kill... and enjoy the possessions of their victims... And when men become fierce and destitute of virtue and carnivorous and addicted to intoxicating drinks, then doth the Yuga come to an end..."

"And men with false reputation of learning will contract Truth and the old will betray the senselessness of the young, and the young will betray the dotage of the old."

"And the kings of the earth with souls steeped in ignorance, and discontented with what they have, will at such a time, rob their subjects by every means in their power..., the right hand will deceive the left; and the left, the right...."

"With gentleness one defeats the gentle as well as the hard; there is nothing impossible to the gentle; therefore the gentle is the more severe."

"When the Gods deal defeat to a person, they first take his mind away, so that he sees things wrongly."

"Discontent is the root of fortune."