Mahabharata

"When your intelligence has passed out of the dense forest of delusion, you shall become indifferent to all that has been heard and all that is to be heard."

"The wise, engaged in devotional service, take refuge in the Lord, and free themselves from the cycle of birth and death by renouncing the fruits of action in the material world. In this way they can attain that state beyond all miseries."

"You are only entitled to the action, never to its fruits. Do not let the fruits of action be your motive, but do not attach yourself to nonaction."

"Either slain thou shalt go to heaven; or victorious thou shalt enjoy the earth. Therefore arise, O Son of Kuntī (Arjuna), resolved on battle."

"One sees This as a wonder; another speaks of This as a wonder; another hears of This as a wonder; yet, having heard none understands This at all!"

"Swords cut him not, nor may fire burn him, O son of Bharata, waters wet him not, nor dry winds parch. He may not be cut nor burned nor wet nor withered; he is eternal, all-present, firm, unshaken, everlasting. He is called unmanifest, unimaginable, unchanging; therefore, knowing him thus, deign not to grieve!"

"As you put on fresh new clothes and take off those you've worn, You'll replace your body with a fresh one, newly born."

"The senses, moving toward their appropriate objects, are producers of heat and cold, pleasure and pain, which come and go and are brief and changeable; these do thou endure, O son of Bharata!"

"You grieve for those who should not be grieved for; yet you speak wise words.Neither for the dead nor those not dead do the wise grieve.Never was there a time when I did not exist nor you nor these lords of men. Neither will there be a time when we shall not exist; we all exist from now on. As the soul experiences in this body childhood, youth, and old age, so also it acquires another body; the sage in this is not deluded."

"My Lord! How can I, when the battle rages, send an arrow through Bheeshma and Drona, who should receive my reverence?"

"My dear Arjuna, how have these impurities come upon you? They are not at all befitting a man who knows the progressive values of life. They do not lead to higher planets, but to infamy. O son of Prtha, do not yield to this degrading impotence. It does not become you. Give up such petty weakness of heart and arise, O chastiser of the enemy."

"If me unresisting, Weaponless, with weapons in their hands Dhritarāshtra's men should slay in battle,That would be a safer course for me."

"Thus speaking Arjuna in the battle Sat down in the box of the car, Letting fall his bow and arrows, His heart smitten with grief."

"What is this crime I am planning, O Krishna? Murder most hateful,Murder of brothers!Am I indeed So greedy for greatness?"

"Out of the corruption of women proceeds the confusion of castes; out of the confusion of castes, the loss of memory; out of the loss of memory, the lack of understanding; and out of this, all evils"

"And even if, because their minds are overwhelmed by greed, they cannot see the evil incurred by destroying one's own family, and the degradation involved in the betrayal of a friend, How can we be so ignorant as not to recoil from this wrong? The evil incurred by destroying one's own family is plain to see, Janardana."

"All those for whom i'd want to live it up are here to die"

"The blowing of these different conchshells became uproarious, and thus, vibrating both in the sky and on the earth, it shattered the hearts of the sons of Dhṛtarāṣṭra."

"Hrishikesha blew the conch shell named Panchajanya and Dhananjaya blew the conch shell named Devadatta. Vrikodara, whose deeds give rise to fear, blew the giant conch shell named Poundra."

"[Duryodhana said:] This force of ours guarded by Bhishma is unbounded; although this force, of theirs – guarded by Bhima, is bounded."

"Sanjaya; Chapter 1, verses 2–3; Graham M. Schweig translation"

"Now seeing the armies of the Pandavas arrayed in battle formation,King Duryodhana, approaching his teacher, spoke these words: Behold these mighty warriors of the sons of Pandu, O Revered Teacher, Arrayed in battle formation by the son of Drupada, your own skillful student."

"In summation, the sublime essence of the Bhagavad Gita is that right action, nonattachment to the world and to its sense pleasures, and union with God by the highest yoga of pranayama meditation, learned from an enlightened guru, constitute the royal path to God-attainment."

"The Geeta is a bouquet composed of the beautiful flowers of spiritual truths collected from the Upanishads."

"The message of the Gita is the message of courage, heroism and atmashakti. The Gita teaches us that weakness is a sin, while shakti is a spiritual virtue."

"It is not a book teaching you how to worship God. Many other texts do the same. It focuses more on the eternal quest to reach Godhead."

"The Gītā was not preached either as a pastime for persons tired out after living a worldly life in the pursuit of selfish motives nor as a preparatory lesson for living such worldly life; but in order to give philosophical advice as to how one should live his worldly life with an eye to Release (mokṣa) and as to the true duty of human beings in worldly life."

"In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagvat-Geeta, since whose composition years of the gods have elapsed, and in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial; and I doubt if that philosophy is not to be referred to a previous state of existence, so remote is its sublimity from our conceptions. I lay down the book and go to my well for water, and lo! there I meet the servant of the Bramin, priest of Brahma and Vishnu and Indra, who still sits in his temple on the Ganges reading the Vedas, or dwells at the root of a tree with his crust and water jug. I meet his servant come to draw water for his master, and our buckets as it were grate together in the same well. The pure Walden water is mingled with the sacred water of the Ganges."

"In order to approach a creation as sublime as the Bhagavad-gita with full understanding it is necessary to attune our soul to it."

"If the Upanishads are the textbooks of philosophical principles discussing man, world and God, the Geeta is a handbook of instructions as to how every human being can come to live the subtle philosophical principles of Vedanta in the actual work-a-day world."

"I am so fond of a statement in the Bagavad Gita, this finest pearl of the Eastern writings, that I never tire of repeating it, and so I shall quote it to you as well. "Man comes to Me by various paths, but by whatever path man comes to Me, on that path I welcome him, for all paths are Mine.""

"Time and time again in the Gita, Krishna declares love for the devotee, and seems to long for the devotee's wisdom and love. The Gita is not only a poem, it is a love poem. May fidelity, then, be deep, complex, and lively."

"The Bhagvad-Gita is the fountainhead of Eastern psychology."

"The Bhagavad-Gita professes to give nothing new beyond what has previously been taught by the Upanishads. It contents itself with a synthesis of the older teachings."

"The Bhagavadgītā is more a religious classic than a philosophical treatise. It is not an esoteric work designed for and understood by the specially initiated but a popular poem which helps even those 'who wander in the region of the many and variable'."

"The Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads contain such godlike fullness of wisdom on all things that I feel the authors must have looked with calm remembrance back through a thousand passionate lives, full of feverish strife for and with shadows, ere they could have written with such certainty of things which the soul feels to be sure."

"Through the centuries, the Gita has remained a relevant text, inspiring militant revolutionaries, non-violent truth-seekers and renouncers of the world. It has enlightened German philosophers such as Schopenhauer and Heidegger; it has inspired Victorian poets such as Sir Edwin Arnold; and it has grounded post-Independence philosophers such as Sarvapelli Radhakrishnan. It has become a literary 'site' which decision-makers turn to to understand their dilemmas, whether they be Indian women and men leading Gandhi's satyagraha, twenty-first-century South Asian-American officers deciding to go to war in the Gulf, or London housewives with their children deciding how to organize their day."

"The juxtaposition of Western civilization's most terrifying scientific achievement with the most dazzling description of the mystical experience given to us by the Bhagavad Gita, India's greatest literary monument."

"The Bhagavad Gita... is the most beautiful philosophical song existing in any known tongue."

"We knew the world would not be the same. Few people laughed, few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and to impress him takes on his multi-armed form and says, "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." I suppose we all thought that, one way or another."

"The Bhagavad-gita deals essentially with the spiritual foundation of human existence. It is a call of action to meet the obligations and duties of life; yet keeping in view the spiritual nature and grander purpose of the universe."

"I believe that the Bhagavad Gita contains the voice of God and that it speaks to each of us, to every mind and heart—individually. This intimate communion transcends the merely intellectual: sarvaśah, in every way."

"In the Bhagavad Gita we have faith, a faith based on spiritual vision. In this vision we have Light. Shall we see? This Song calls us to Love and Life. Shall we hear?"

"I believe that in all the living languages of the world, there is no book so full of true knowledge, and yet so handy as the Bhagawad Geeta..... It brings to men the highest knowledge, the purest love and the most luminous action. It teaches self-control, the threefold austerity, non-violence, truth, compassion, obedience to the call of duty for the sake of duty and putting up a fight against unrighteousness (Adharma)... To my knowledge, there is no book in the whole range of the world's literature so high above all as the Bhagawad Geeta which is treasure-house of Dharma not only for Hindus but for all mankind."

"In a very clear and wonderful way, under the guise of physical warfare, the Gita describes the duel that perpetually goes on in the hearts of each one of us; a fight of dharma, justice, against adharma, evil, injustice. The battle takes place not only on the fields of Kurukshetra but also on the elusive dharmakshetra 'field of dharma', a spiritual field within each of us where all moral struggles are waged."

"The Bhagwat Gita Is the most revered religious book in Hinduism. It is a acceptable to people of many different religious denominations. It has been translated into many different languages. It is considered to be a book not only of religion but also of ethics, espousing eternal moral values. … According to Ambedkar, the Bhagwat Gita is neither a book of religion nor a treatise on philosophy. What the Bhagwat Gita does is to defend certain dogmas of religion on philosophic grounds. It is a philosophic defence of the counter-revolution."

"Readers of the Bhagavad Gita will also remember the teaching of love and devotion with which it is filled... He varies the type of religion to suit the period of the world’s history at which it is put forth, and the people to whom it is given; but though the form may vary as evolution proceeds, the ethics are ever the same."

"The sixth school is that of bhakti or devotion...taught to a large extent in the Bhagavad-Gita; indeed, we find it in every religion among those true devotees who put their trust entirely in the Divine— who do not pray for personal favours, but are quite convinced that God is perfect master of his world, that he knows what he is doing, and that therefore all is well; they are therefore more than content, they are thrilled with ecstasy, if they can but have the opportunity and the privilege to serve and obey him in any way."

"The second school of yoga is that of Shri Krishna, particularly expounded in the great poem the Bhagavad-Gita... This teaches above all else the doctrine of love. The disciple Arjuna, to whom the Guru spoke, was a great lover of mankind; according to the scripture this great soldier sank down upon the floor of his chariot before the battle of Kurukshetra began, full of sorrow because he loved his enemies and could not bear to injure them. The teacher Shri Krishna then explained to him, amid much philosophical teaching, that the greatest thing in life is service, that God himself is the greatest server—for he keeps the wheel of life revolving, not because any benefit can possibly accrue to him in consequence, but for the sake of the world—and that men should follow his example and work for the welfare of mankind. Many Great Ones, he said, had reached perfection by following this path of life, by doing their duty without personal desire. To love without ceasing is the way of the second Ray; in the Gita it is shown how this love should be directed to men and other beings in karma yoga (the yoga by action or work) and to God in bhakti yoga (the yoga by devotion)."

"I believe the Gita to be one of the major religious documents of the world. If its teachings did not seem to me to agree with those of the other gospels and scriptures, then my own system of values would be thrown into confusion, and I should feel completely bewildered. The Gita is not simply a sermon, but a philosophical treatise."