“If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide.”

“How few there are who gather the gifts which lie in profusion at their feet: how many there are, who, in wilful waywardness, turn their eyes away from them and complain with a wail that they have not that which I have given them; many of them defiantly repudiate not only My gifts, but Me also, Me, the Source of all blessings and the Author of their being.”

“In doing something, do it with love or never do it at all.”

“I had learnt to find out the better side of human nature and to enter men’s hearts. I realised that the true function of a lawyer was to unite parties riven asunder.”

“Renunciation of objects, without the renunciation of desires, is short-lived, however hard you may try.”

“Numerous examples have convinced me that God ultimately saves him whose motive is pure.”

“Europe I travelled third—and only once first, just to see what it was like—but there I noticed no such difference between the first and the third-classes. In South Africa third-class passengers are mostly Negroes, yet the third-class comforts are better there than here.”

“understood more clearly in the light of the Gita teaching the implication of the word ‘trustee’.”

“Children inherit the qualities of the parents, no less than their physical features. Environment does play an important part, but the original capital on which a child starts in life is inherited from its ancestors. I have also seen children successfully surmounting the effects of an evil inheritance. That is due to purity being an inherent attribute of the soul. Polak and I had often very heated discussions about the desirability or otherwise of giving the children an English education. It has always been my conviction that Indian parents who train their children to think and talk in English from their infancy betray their children and their country. They deprive them of the spiritual and social heritage of the nation, and render them to that extent unfit for the service of the country. Having these convictions, I made a point of always talking to my children in Gujarati. Polak never liked this. He thought I was spoiling their future. He contended, with all the vigour and love at his command, that, if children were to learn a universal language like English from their infancy, they would easily gain considerable advantage over others in the race of life. He failed to convince me. I do not now remember whether I convinced him of the correctness of my attitude, or whether he gave me up as too obstinate. This happened about twenty years ago, and my convictions have only deepened with experience. Though my sons have suffered for want of full literary education, the knowledge of the mother-tongue that they naturally acquired has been all to their and the country’s good, inasmuch as they do not appear the foreigners they would otherwise have appeared. They naturally became bilingual, speaking and writing English with fair ease, because of daily contact with a large circle of English friends, and because of their stay in a country where English was the chief language spoken.”

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way in which its animals are treated.”

“The truest test of a democracy is in the ability of anyone to act as he likes, so long as he does not injure the life or property of anyone else.”

“When your intellect, once perverted by listening to all manner of arguments, is totally absorbed in the contemplation of God, you will then attain yoga. When a person is firmly established in samadhi — samadhi means fixing the mind on God — he is filled with ecstatic love and, therefore, can be completely indifferent to this world.”

“The inner voice is something which cannot be described in words. But sometimes we have a positive feeling that something in us prompts us to do a certain thing. The time when I learnt to recognise this voice was, I may say, the time when I started praying regularly.”

“An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.”

“Each one has to find his peace from within. And peace to be real must be unaffected by outside circumstances.”