“Vivre simplement, pour que simplement d'autres puissent vivre.”

“Kekerasan adalah senjata orang yang jiwanya lemah.”

“I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the culture of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any”

“Sir Pherozeshah had seemed to me like the Himalaya, the Lokamanya like the ocean. But Gokhale was as the Ganges.” 

“Just as a man would not cherish living in a body other than his own, so do nations not like to live under other nations, however noble and great the latter may be.”

“It was only in South Africa that I got over this shyness, though I never completely overcame it. It was impossible for me to speak impromptu. I hesitated whenever I had to face strange audiences and avoided making a speech whenever I could. Even today I do not think I could or would even be inclined to keep a meeting of friends engaged in idle talk. I must say that, beyond occasionally exposing me to laughter, my constitutional shyness has been no disadvantage whatever. In fact I can see that, on the contrary, it has been all to my advantage. My hesitancy in speech, which was once an annoyance, is now a pleasure. Its greatest benefit has been that it has taught me the economy of words. I have naturally formed the habit of restraining my thoughts. And I can now give myself the certificate that a thoughtless word hardly ever escapes my tongue or pen. I do not recollect ever having had to regret anything in my speech or writing. I have thus been spared many a mishap and waste of time. Experience has taught me that silence is part of the spiritual discipline of a votary of truth. Proneness to exaggerate, to suppress or modify the truth, wittingly or unwittingly, is a natural weakness of man, and silence is necessary in order to surmount it. A man of few words will rarely be thoughtless in his speech; he will measure every word. We find so many people impatient to talk. There is no chairman of a meeting who is not pestered with notes for permission to speak. And whenever the permission is given the speaker generally exceeds the time-limit, asks for more time, and keeps on talking without permission. All this talking can hardly be said to be of any benefit to the world. It is so much waste of time. My shyness has been in reality my shield and buckler. It has allowed me to grow. It has helped me in my discernment of truth.”

“That matchless remedy (for self realisation) is renunciation of fruits of action.”

“Silence becomes cowardice when occasion demands speaking out the whole truth and acting accordingly.” 

“Cuando hay una tormenta los pajaritos se esconden, pero las águilas vuelan más alto”

“It was not easy to commit suicide as to contemplate it.”

“Human language can but imperfectly describe God’s ways.”

“It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honoured by the humiliation of their fellow beings.”

“In prayer it is better to have a heart without words than words without a heart.”

“The punishment of evil doers consists in making them feel ashamed of themselves by doing them a great kindness.”

“If physical fasting is not accompanied by mental fasting it is bound to end in hypocrisy and disaster.”