Now the greatest external good we should assume to be the thing which we offer as a tribute to the gods, and which is most coveted by men of high station, and is the prize awarded for the noblest deeds; and such a thing is honor, for honor is clearly the greatest of external goods.
Only by the supernatural is a man strong--only by confiding in the divinity which stirs within us. Nothing is so weak as an egotist--nothing is mightier than we, when we are vehicles of a truth before which the state and the individual are alike ephemeral.
All men can bear a familiar, definite misfortune better than the cruel alternations of a fate which, from one moment to another, brings excessive joy or sorrow.
Now man cannot live without some vision of himself. But still less can he live with a vision that is not true to his inner experience and inner feeling.
Many of us, utterly overcome by Tamas, the dark and heavy demon of inertia, are saying nowadays that it is impossible, that India is decayed, bloodless and lifeless, too weak ever to recover; that our race is doomed to extinction. It is a foolish and idle saying. No man or nation need be weak unless he chooses, no man or nation need perish unless he deliberately chooses extinction.
The form of government that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all. ... One might point out how the Renaissance was great, because it sought to solve no social problem, and busied itself not about such things, but suffered the individual to develop freely, beautifully, and naturally, and so had great and individual artists, and great, individual men. One might point out how Louis XIV, by creating the modern state, destroyed the individualism of the artist.
One man runs to his neighbor because he is looking for himself, and another because he wants to loose himself. Your bad love of yourselves makes solitude a prison for you.
It is quite easy to see why a legend is treated, and ought to be treated, more respectfully than a book of history. The legend is generally made by the majority of people in the village, who are sane. The book is generally written by the one man in the village who is mad.
It is most important to allow the brain the full measure of sleep which is required to restore it; for sleep is to a man's whole nature what winding up is to a clock.
Your enlightenment depends on the company you keep. You do not know the world until you know the men who have possessed it and tried its wares before you were ever given your brief run upon it.