Sri Aurobindo quotes - page 4

Theorist, and trifler though I may be called, I again assert as our first and holiest duty, the elevation and enlightenment of the proletariate: I again call on those nobler spirits among us who are working erroneously, it may be, but with incipient or growing sincerity and nobleness of mind, to divert their strenuous effort from the promotion of narrow class interests, from silly squabbles about offices and salaried positions, from a philanthropy laudable in itself and worthy of rational pursuit, but meagre in the range of its benevolence and ineffectual towards promoting the nearest interests of the nation, into that vaster channel through which alone the healing waters may be conducted to the lips of their ailing and tortured country. (Sri Aurobindo)
To thy lover, O Lord, the railing of the world is wild honey and the pelting of stones by the mob is summer rain on the body. For is it not Thou that railest and peltest, and is it not Thou in the stones that strikest and hurtest me? View quote
Sri Aurobindo
I was much plagued by Satan, until I found that it was God who was tempting me; then the anguish of him passed out of my soul for ever. View quote
Sri Aurobindo
Revolutions hew the past to pieces and cast it into a cauldron, but what has emerged is the old Aeson with a new visage. View quote
Sri Aurobindo
When thou callest another a fool, as thou must, sometimes, yet do not forget that thou thyself hast been the supreme fool in humanity. View quote
Sri Aurobindo
Mankind has used two powerful weapons to destroy its own powers and enjoyment, wrong indulgence and wrong abstinence. View quote
Sri Aurobindo
Transform enjoying into an even and objectless ecstasy; let all thyself be bliss. This is thy goal. View quote
Sri Aurobindo
They say, O my God, that I am mad because I see no fault in Thee; but if I am indeed mad with Thy love, I do not wish to recover my sanity. View quote
Sri Aurobindo
If thy aim be great and thy means small, still act; for by action alone these can increase to thee. View quote
Sri Aurobindo
Not to go on for ever repeating what man has already done is our work, but to arrive at new realisations and undreamed-of masteries. Time and soul and world are given us for our field, vision and hope and creative imagination stand for our prompters, will and thought and labour are our all-effective instruments. View quote
Sri Aurobindo
Nothing can be more untrue than to pretend that the general religious mind of India has not at all grasped the higher spiritual or metaphysical truths of Indian religion. It is a sheer falsehood or a wilful misunderstanding to say that it has lived always in the externals only of rite and creed and shibboleth. On the contrary, the main metaphysical truths of Indian religious philosophy in their broad idea-aspects or in an intensely poetic and dynamic representation have been stamped on the general mind of the people. The ideas of Maya, Lila, divine Immanence are as familiar to the man in the street and the worshipper in the temple as to the philosopher in his seclusion, the monk in his monastery and the saint in his hermitage. The spiritual reality which they reflect, the profound experience to which they point, has permeated the religion, the literature, the art, even the popular religious songs of a whole people. (Sri Aurobindo)
You have spoken much today of my self-sacrifice and devotion to my country. I have heard that kind of speech ever since I came out of jail, but I hear it with embarrassment, with something of pain. For I know my weakness, I am a prey to my own faults and backslidings. I was not blind to them before and when they all rose up against me in seclusion, I felt them utterly. I knew them that I the man was a man of weakness, a faulty and imperfect instrument, strong only when a higher strength entered into me. Then I found myself among these young men and in many of them I discovered a mighty courage, a power of self-effacement in comparison with which I was simply nothing. I saw one or two who were not only superior to me in force and character, - very many were that, - but in the promise of that intellectual ability on which I prided myself. View quote
Sri Aurobindo
The end of a stage of evolution is usually marked by a powerful recrudescence of all that has to go out of the evolution. View quote
Sri Aurobindo
The traditions of the past are very great in their own place, in the past, but I do not see why we should merely repeat them and not go farther. In the spiritual development of the consciousness upon earth the great past ought to be followed by a greater future. View quote
Sri Aurobindo
But that immergence is not in the nature of an annihilation. Extinction is not the fulfilment of all this search and passion, suffering and rapture. The game would never have been begun if that were to be its ending. View quote
Sri Aurobindo
God took a child to fondle him in His bosom of delight; but the mother wept and would not be consoled because her child no longer existed. View quote
Sri Aurobindo
Genius discovers a system; average talent stereotypes it till it is shattered by fresh genius. It is dangerous for an army to be led by veterans; for on the other side God may place Napoleon. View quote
Sri Aurobindo
To commit adultery with God is the perfect experience for which the world was created. View quote
Sri Aurobindo
What is the use of only knowing? I say to thee, Act and be, for therefore God sent thee into this human body. View quote
Sri Aurobindo
Hate not the oppressor, for, if he is strong, thy hate increases his force of resistance; if he is weak, thy hate was needless. View quote
Sri Aurobindo
In Kashmir, the Hindus had all the monopoly. Now if the Muslim demands are acceded to, the Hindus will be wiped out. (Sri Aurobindo)
India is the meeting-place of the religions and among these Hinduism alone is by itself a vast and complex thing, not so much a religion as a great diversified and yet subtly unified mass of spiritual thought, realisation and aspiration. What will finally come out of all this stir and ferment, lies yet in the future. View quote
Sri Aurobindo
Canst thou see God as the bodiless Infinite and yet love Him as a man loves his mistress? Then has the highest truth of the Infinite been revealed to thee. Canst thou also clothe the Infinite in one secret embraceable body and see Him seated in each and all of these bodies that are visible and sensible? Then has its widest and profoundest truth come also into thy possession. View quote
Sri Aurobindo
Each language is the sign and power of the soul of the people which naturally speaks it. Each develops therefore its own peculiar spirit, thought-temperament, way of dealing with life and knowledge and experience.... A nation, race or people which loses its language, cannot live its whole life or its real life. And this advantage to the national life is at the same time an advantage to the general life of the human race. View quote
Sri Aurobindo
When we have passed beyond knowings, then we shall have Knowledge. Reason was the helper; Reason is the bar. View quote
Sri Aurobindo