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Sri Aurobindo

204 quotes

• “Evolution is not finished; reason is not the last word nor the reasoning animal the supreme figure of Nature. As man emerged out of the animal, so out of man the superman emerges.”

  Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) first seen 1913 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Thoughts and Aphorisms (1913)

• “What I cannot do now is the sign of what I shall do hereafter. The sense of impossibility is the beginning of all possibilities. Because this temporal universe was a paradox and an impossibility, therefore the Eternal created it out of His being.”

  Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) first seen 1916 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Thoughts and Glimpses (1916-17)

• “The meeting of man and God must always mean a penetration and entry of the divine into the human and a self-immergence of man in the Divinity.”

  Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) first seen 1916 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Thoughts and Glimpses (1916-17)

• “The Hindu religion appears … as a cathedral temple, half in ruins, noble in the mass, often fantastic in detail but always fantastic with a significance — crumbling or badly outworn in places, but a cathedral temple in which service is still done to the Unseen and its real presence can be felt by those who enter with the right spirit.”

  Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) first seen 1949 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Letters, Vol. II (1949) p. 53; also in The Soul of India (1974) by Satyavrata R Patel

• “More high-reaching, subtle, many-sided, curious and profound than the Greek, more noble and humane than the Roman, more large and spiritual than the old Egyptian, more vast and original than any other Asiatic civilization, more intellectual than the European prior to the 18th century, possessing all that these had and more, it was the most powerful, self-possessed, stimulating and wide in influence of all past human cultures.”

  Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Foundations of Indian Culture (1953), p. 31

• “Indian religion has always felt that since the minds, the temperaments and the intellectual affinities of men are unlimited in their variety, a perfect liberty of thought and of worship must be allowed to the individual in his approach to the Infinite.”

  Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Foundations of Indian Culture (1953), p. 147

• “To listen to some devout people, one would imagine that God never laughs; Heine was nearer the mark when he found in Him the divine Aristophanes. God's laughter is sometimes very coarse and unfit for polite ears; He is not satisfied with being Molière, He must needs also be Aristophanes and Rabelais.”

  Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Sri Aurobindo : The Hour of God, and Other Writings (1970); variant "To listen to some devout people, one would imagine that God never laughed; Heine was nearer the mark when he found in Him the divine Aristophanes" in …

• “There are four great events in history, the siege of Troy, the life and crucifixion of Christ, the exile of Krishna in Brindaban and the colloquy on the field of Kurukshetra. The siege of Troy created Hellas, the exile in Brindaban created devotional religion, (for before there was only meditation and worship), Christ from his cross humanized Europe, the colloquy at Kurukshetra will yet liberate humanity.”

  Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: On the Bhagavad Gita quoted in "Introduction to the Bhagavad Gita" (1993) by by Paul Molinari

• “Even soul-force, when it is effective, destroys. Only those who have used it with eyes open, know how much more destructive it can be than the sword and the cannon; and only those who do not limit their view to the act and its immediate results, can see how tremendous are its after-effects, how much is eventually destroyed and with that much all the life that depended upon it and fed upon it. Evil cannot perish without the destruction of much that lives by the evil, and it is no less destruction even if we personally are saved the pain of a sensational act of violence.”

  Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Kurukshetra" in Essays on the Gita (1995), p. 39

• “The seers of ancient India had, in their experiments and efforts at spiritual training and the conquest of the body, perfected a discovery which in its importance to the future of human knowledge dwarfs the divinations of Newton and Galileo, even the discovery of the inductive and experimental method in Science was not more momentous...”

  Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Upanishads–II : Kena and Other Upanishads (2001), p. 355

• “In India, the bourgeois, in Japan, the Samurai; in this single difference is comprised the whole contrasted histories of the two nations during the nineteenth century.”

  Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) first seen 1906 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Sri Aurobindo, The Bourgeois and the Samurai (1906– 1907), quoted in The Idea of India- Bhārat as a Civilisation -- Subhash Kak

• “We cannot afford to raise any institution to the rank of a fetish. To do so would be simply to become the slaves of our own machinery.”

  Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) first seen 1893 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: 7 August 1893

• “Our actual enemy is not any force exterior to ourselves, but our own crying weaknesses, our cowardice, our selfishness, our hypocrisy, our purblind sentimentalism.”

  Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) first seen 1893 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: 21 August 1893

• “I say, of the Congress, then, this — that its aims are mistaken, that the spirit in which it proceeds towards their accomplishment is not a spirit of sincerity and whole-heartedness, and that the methods it has chosen are not the right methods, and the leaders in whom it trusts, not the right sort of men to be leaders; — in brief, that we are at present the blind led, if not by the blind, at any rate by the one-eyed.”

  Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) first seen 1893 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: 28 August 1893

• “To play with baubles is our ambition, not to deal with grave questions in a spirit of serious energy. But while we are playing with baubles, with our Legislative Councils, our Simultaneous Examinations, our ingenious schemes for separating the judicial from the executive functions, — while we, I say, are finessing about trifles, the waters of the great deep are being stirred and that surging chaos of the primitive man over which our civilised societies are superimposed on a thin crust of convention, is being strangely and ominously agitated.”

  Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) first seen 1893 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: 4 December 1893

• “I had many doubts before. I was brought up in England amongst foreign ideas and an atmosphere entirely foreign. About many things in Hinduism I had once been inclined to believe that they were imaginations, that there was much of dream in it, much that was delusion and Maya. But now day after day I realised in the mind, I realised in the heart, I realised in the body the truths of the Hindu religion. They became living experiences to me, and things were opened to me which no material science could explain.”

  Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “When I approached God at that time, I hardly had a living faith in Him. The agnostic was in me, the atheist was in me, the sceptic was in me and I was not absolutely sure that there was a God at all. I did not feel His presence. Yet something drew me to the truth of the Vedas, the truth of the Gita, the truth of the Hindu religion. I felt there must be a mighty truth somewhere in this Yoga, a mighty truth in this religion based on the Vedanta.”

  Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “There are two allied powers in man; knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge is so much of the truth seen in a distorted medium as the mind arrives at by groping, wisdom what the eye of divine vision sees in the spirit.”

  Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Inspiration is a slender river of brightness leaping from a vast and eternal knowledge, it exceeds reason more perfectly than reason exceeds the knowledge of the senses.”

  Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Late, I learned that when reason died, then Wisdom was born; before that liberation, I had only knowledge.”

  Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “What men call knowledge, is the reasoned acceptance of false appearances. Wisdom looks behind the veil and sees.”

  Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “When I had the dividing reason, I shrank from many things; after I had lost it in sight, I hunted through the world for the ugly and the repellent, but I could no longer find them.”

  Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Forgiveness is praised by the Christian and the Vaishnava, but for me, I ask, "What have I to forgive and whom?”

  Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The Atheist is God playing at hide and seek with Himself; but is the Theist any other? Well, perhaps; for he has seen the shadow of God and clutched at it.”

  Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “O Thou that lovest, strike! If Thou strike me not now, I shall know that Thou lov'st me not.”

  Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “There is no mortality. It is only the Immortal who can die; the mortal could neither be born nor perish. There is nothing finite. It is only the Infinite who can make for Himself limits; the finite can have no beginning nor end, for the very act of conceiving its beginning and end declares its infinity.”

  Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Sin and virtue are a game of resistance we play with God in His efforts to draw us towards perfection. The sense of virtue helps us to cherish our sins in secret.”

  Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “A thought is an arrow shot at the truth; it can hit a point, but not cover the whole target. But the archer is too well satisfied with his success to ask anything farther.”

  Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “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.”

  Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Open thy eyes and see what the world really is and what God; have done with vain and pleasant imaginations.”

  Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Hard is it to be in the world, free, yet living the life of ordinary men; but because it is hard, therefore it must be attempted and accomplished.”

  Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Hatred is the sign of a secret attraction that is eager to flee from itself and furious to deny its own existence. That too is God's play in His creature.”

  Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Live according to Nature, runs the maxim of the West; but according to what nature, the nature of the body or the nature which exceeds the body ? This first we ought to determine.”

  Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “When thou callest another a fool, as thou must, sometimes, yet do not forget that thou thyself hast been the supreme fool in humanity.”

  Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “In God's providence there is no evil, but only good or its preparation.”

  Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Live within; be not shaken by outward happenings.”

  Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Hate not the oppressor, for, if he is strong, thy hate increases his force of resistance; if he is weak, thy hate was needless.”

  Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Very usually, altruism is only the sublimest form of selfishness.”

  Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Revolutions hew the past to pieces and cast it into a cauldron, but what has emerged is the old Aeson with a new visage.”

  Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Suffer yourself to be tempted within so that you may exhaust in the struggle your downward propensities.”

  Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “If thou think defeat is the end of thee, then go not forth to fight, even though thou be the stronger. For Fate is not purchased by any man nor is Power bound over to her possessors. But defeat is not the end, it is only a gate or a beginning.”

  Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “I have failed, thou sayest. Say rather that God is circling about towards His object.”

  Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “If thy aim be great and thy means small, still act; for by action alone these can increase to thee.”

  Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Care not for time and success. Act out thy part, whether it be to fail or to prosper.”

  Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “He who would win high spiritual degrees, must pass endless tests and examinations. But most are anxious only to bribe the examiner.”

  Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “O soldier and hero of God, where for thee is sorrow or shame or suffering? For thy life is a glory, thy deeds a consecration, victory thy apotheosis, defeat thy triumph.”

  Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “O Death, our masked friend and maker of opportunities, when thou wouldst open the gate, hesitate not to tell us beforehand; for we are not of those who are shaken by its iron jarring.”

  Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Watch the too indignantly righteous. Before long you will find them committing or condoning the very offence which they have so fiercely censured.”

  Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “When thou findest thyself scorning another, look then at thy own heart and laugh at thy folly.”

  Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Turn all things to honey; this is the law of divine living.”

  Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

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