Each man must learn his own ideal and try to accomplish it: that is a surer way of progress than to take the ideas of another.

To a man whose mind is free there is something even more intolerable in the sufferings of animals than in the sufferings of man. For with the latter it is at least admitted that suffering is evil and that the man who causes it is a criminal. But thousands of animals are uselessly butchered every day without a shadow of remorse. If any man were to refer to it, he would be thought ridiculous. And that is the unpardonable crime.

One makes mistakes; that is life. But it is never a mistake to have loved.

History furnishes to politics all the arguments that it needs, for the chosen cause.

There are some dead who are more alive than the living.

Any man who is really a man must learn to be alone in the midst of others, to think alone for others, and, if necessary, against others.

The true Vedantic spirit does not start out with a system of preconceived ideas. It possesses absolute liberty and unrivalled courage among religions with regard to the facts to be observed and the diverse hypotheses it has laid down for their coordination. Never having been hampered by a priestly order, each man has been entirely free to search wherever he pleased for the spiritual explanation of the spectacle of the universe.