Annie Besant Quotes

The marvel of the Bhagavad-Gita is its truly beautiful revelation of life's wisdom which enables philosophy to blossom into religion.

The New Testament is remarkable for its pure morality; the best of the Hindoo Scripture, for its pure intellectuality. The readeris nowhere raised into and sustained in a higher, purer, or rarer region of thought than in the Bhagvat-Geeta.... It is unquestionably one of the noblest and most sacred scriptures which have come down to us.

The Sermon on the Mount...went straight to my heart. I compared it with the Gita. My young mind tried to unify the teaching of the Gita, the 'Light of Asia' and the Sermon on the Mount. That renunciation was the highest form of religion appealed to me greatly.

George Washington understood that the Bible is the place where God's records of right and wrong are kept.

We need to agree on common values for all religions as soon as possible, a kind of secular Ten Commandments on which we will build the world of tomorrow.

This Divine truth flows into heaven from the Lord from His Divine love.

Every moral teacher or spiritual adviser gives injunctions about how to live wisely and well. But life is so complicated and full of uncertainty that rules seldom tell us quite what to do.

The Bible stands alone in human literature in its elevated conception of manhood, in character and conduct.

I have more appreciation for why the Bible avoids fuzzy psychologisms and says simply to the stealer, "Steal no more," and to the tempted, "Flee temptation." The Bible challenges us to look upward, not inward, for counsel at moments of crisis.

Would you say that any one sacred book is superior to all others in the world? ... I say the New Testament, after that, I should place the Koran, which in its moral teachings, is hardly more than a later edition of the New Testament. Then would follow according to my opinion the Old Testament, the Southern Buddhist Tripitaka, the Tao-te-king of Laotze, the Kings of Confucius, the Veda and the Avesta.

I conceive the essential task of religion to be "to develop the consciences, the ideals, and the aspirations of mankind".

The system of morality to be gathered from the ancient sages falls very short of that delivered in the gospel.

There is a saying that Heaven is internal, humanity external and Virtue comes from the Heavenly. Know Heaven and humanity's actions, root yourself in Heaven and follow Virture.Then you can bend, stretch, rush forward or hold back, because you will always return to the core and it will be said you have achieved the supreme.

If we desire rules to govern our spiritual development we turn back to the Sermon on the Mount.

That the system of morals propounded in the New Testament contained no maxim which had not been previously enunciated, and that some of the most beautiful passages in the apostolic writings are quotations from Pagan authors, is well known to every scholar... To assert that Christianity communicated to man moral truths previously unknown, argues on the part of the asserted either gross ignorance or wilful fraud.

Religion hides many mischiefs from suspicion.

The doctrines of Jesus are simple, and tend to all the happiness of man.

... organized religion, in a dominating business society, can do only one of two things. It can either assure the communicant with uneasy bluster that God Himself likes money -- a theory which convinces nobody -- or it can give him an apologetic, halfhearted invitation to go out and get himself crucified.

This book [the Bible] speaks both the voice of God and the voice of humanity, for there is told in it the most convincing of human experience that has ever been written...and those who heed that story will know their strength and happiness and success are all summed up in the exhortation, "Fear God and keep His commandments."

The true meaning of Christ's teaching consists in the recognition of love as the supreme law of life, and therefore not admitting any exceptions.

Christianity is not so much the advent of a better doctrine as of a perfect character.

The great moral teachers of humanity were in a way artistic geniuses in the art of living.

The Word of God proves the truth of religion; the corruption of man, its necessity; government, its advantages.

Faith teaches that there is a right and wrong beyond mere opinion or desire. Most importantly, it teaches us that freedom is not an end in itself, that how freedom is exercised matters as much as freedom itself

All the great religions contain wise prescriptions relating to the conduct of life, which hold good now as they did when they were promulgated.