Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

A great man is always willing to be little.

I hate women because they always know where things are.

Of course, money will do after its kind, and will steadily work to unspiritualize and unchurch the people to whom it was bequeathed.

Guilt, regret, resentment, sadness and all forms of nonforgiveness are caused by too much past and not enough presence.

No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism.

We are happier in many ways when we are old than when we were young. The young sow wild oats. The old grow sage.

The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.

Rare virtues are like rare plants or animals, things that have not been able to hold their own in the world. A virtue to be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some commoner but more durable metal.

No man should travel until he has learned the language of the country he visits. Otherwise he voluntarily makes himself a great baby-so helpless and so ridiculous.

Appreciation is a wonderful thing: It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.

The way it is now, the asylums can hold the sane people but if we tried to shut up the insane we would run out of building materials.

It is in these acts called trivialities that the seeds of joy are forever wasted, until men and women look round with haggard faces at the devastation their own waste has made, and say, the earth bears no harvest of sweetness – calling their denial knowledge.

Five minutes of today are worth as much to me, as five minutes in the next millennium. Let us be poised, and wise, and our own, today.

Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.

Tis the old secret of the gods that they come in low disguises.