It is not what things are objectively and in themselves, but what they are for us, in our way of looking at them, that makes us happy or the reverse.

In action a great heart is the chief qualification. In work, a great head.

Scoundrels are always sociable.

...in the end every one stands alone, and the important thing is who it is that stands alone.

Compassion is the basis of morality.

Our religions will never at any time take root; the ancient wisdom of the human race will not be supplanted by the events in Galilee. On the contrary, Indian wisdom flows back to Europe, and will produce a fundamental change in our knowledge and thought.

Monotheistic religions alone furnish the spectacle of religious wars, religious persecutions, heretical tribunals, that breaking of idols and destruction of images of the gods, that razing of Indian temples and Egyptian colossi, which had looked on the sun 3,000 years: just because a jealous god had said, Thou shalt make no graven image.