Quotes & Quips

"Find God.That is the only purpose in life."

Sri Ramakrishna (1836-1886)

There is one thing God cannot do He cannot separate Himself from the soul. Yogaswami of Jaffna (1872-1964)

In the midst of great joy do not promise anyone anything. In the midst of great anger do not answer anyone's letter. Chinese Proverb

I see this as a fight for the dharma. Eating a cow, for a Hindu, would be like eating your own mother. Harish Bharti, a Seattle based Hindu lawyer suing McDonald's for "deliberately misleading its American customers" by putting beef flavoring in their french fries and marking it as "natural flavor."

The finest emotion of which we are capable is the mystic emotion. Herein lies the germ of all art and all true science. Anyone to whom this feeling is alien, who is no longer capable of wonderment and lives in a state of fear is a dead man. To know that what is impenetrable for us really exists and manifests itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, whose gross forms alone are intelligible to our poor faculties his knowledge, this feeling … that is the core of the true religious sentiment. In this sense, and in this sense alone, I rank myself among profoundly religious men. Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

There is nothing that wastes the body like worry, and one who has any faith in God should be ashamed to worry about anything whatsoever. Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)

Learn from the mistakes of others. You can never live long enough to make them all yourself.

This was in the late 70s, I was eating when I suddenly felt that the meat tasted dead, like ashes in my mouth. It was nothing spiritual, it was just that my body told me. I realized then I wanted fresh life taste in my food, and with meat, we do not even know how long it has been dead. Former "Golden Girls" star Rue McClahan on how she became a strict vegetarian

In the garden of the soul, plant the seed of the Word (Lord's Name). Water the soil with love and humility and reap the fruits of Divinity. Guru Granth Sahib, the Sikh scriptures

We are writing to you today because we are extremely concerned after hearing news reports which indicate that the Taliban leadership in Afghanistan plans to force Afghan Hindus to wear labels on their clothing to differentiate them from Muslims. We urge you to immediately take steps that will convince the Taliban to withdraw this proposal. History has shown over and over that segregation of this kind can lead to genocide. This action alone is enough to raise that specter. From a letter written by more than 100 US lawmakers to President George W. Bush urging him to intervene against Afghanistan's ruling Taliban

Killing time murders opportunities.

You don't stop laughing because you grow old; you grow old because you stop laughing.

O God of mercy who performs the dance of illimitable happiness in the hall of inconceivable intelligence! The Rig and the other Vedas are thundering forth in words, announcing to us that all are thy slaves, all things belong to thee, all actions are thine, that thou pervades everywhere, that this is thy nature. Such is the teaching of those who, though they never speak, broke silence for our sake. Tayumanavar

The test of a man is how much he can bear and how much he can share and how soon he confesses a mistake and makes amends for it. Dada J.P. Vaswani

To give love is true freedom; to demand love is pure slavery. Swami Chinmayananda

Lord Siva, the bestower of happiness, gave the art of yoga. As Nataraja, King of dancers, He gave dance. BKS Iyengar

An old brahmin priest spoke with his Lord Siva about heaven and hell (which is called Narakaloka in Sanskrit and differs from other hells in not being eternal, but a temporary state of souls between births). The Lord said to the aging pandit, "Come, I will show you hell." They entered a room where a group of people sat around a huge pot of wonderful smelling vegetable curry. Everyone was famished, desperate and starving. Each held a spoon that reached the pot, but each spoon had a handle so much longer than their arm that it could not be used to get the stew into their own mouths. The suffering was terrible. "Come, now I will show you heaven," Siva said after a while. They entered another room, identical to the first the pot of luscious curry, the group of people, the same long-handled spoons. But everyone was happy and well-nourished. "I don't understand," said the Brahmin. "Why are they happy here when they were miserable in the other room where everything was exactly the same?" Lord Siva smiled, "Ah, it is simple," He said. "Here they have learned to feed each other."

Rabindranath Tagore is not only the best-read and most revered Indian literary figure in Russia, he is among the most widely read foreign poets in this country. You will not find a single Russian family whose private library is not adorned with the works of Tagore, some of which were translated into Russian as far back as 1915. Alexander Danilchuk, Russian expert on Tagore

If there is one place on the face of earth where all the dreams of living men have found a home from the very earliest days when man began the dream of existence, it is India. French scholar Romain Rolland

DID YOU KNOW?

Biggest Hindu Temple

The Srirangam Temple complex in Tiruchirappali, Tamil Nadu, India, is the largest Hindu temple in the world, so says theGuinness Book of World Records. This recently renovated Vaishnavite Temple consists of seven concentric rectangular enclosures around the inner sanctum in a walled area of 156 acres. The temple houses 18 major and 55 minor towersone recently replated with 22 pounds of gold leaf. The innermost sanctum houses Lord Vishnu as Sri Ranganathaswami. Visit the temple's website at:www.srirangamtemple.org.

Avoidance of Envy

Tirukural 162:Among the many precious things a man may acquire, none surpasses a nature free from envy toward all.

Tirukural 165:A man's own envy is foe enough to forge his ruin, even if he has no other enemies.

Tirukural 167:Goddess Fortune, intolerant of those who cannot tolerate others' success, introduces them to her sister, Misfortune, and goes away.

Tirukural 168: The wicked one called Envy consumes this world's wealth, then consigns sinners to those worlds of hellish fire.

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