Max Muller Quotes

All the fallacies of human reason had to be exhausted, before the light of a high truth could meet with ready acceptance.

The morning hour has gold at the mouth.

It is the heart that makes the critic, not the nose.

Is it sin, which makes the worm a chrysalis, and the chrysalis a butterfly, and the butterfly dust?

In order to discover truth, we must be truthful ourselves, and must welcome those who point out our errors as heartily as those who approve and confirm our discoveries.

Thus one memory follows another until the waves dash together over our heads, and a deep sigh swells the breast, which warns us that we have forgotten to breathe in the midst of these pure thoughts.

He who, though dressed in fine apparel, exercises tranquillity, is quiet, subdued, restrained, chaste, and has ceased to find fault with all other beings, he indeed is an ascetic.

Whatever sphere of the human mind you may select for your special study, whether it be language, or religion, or mythology, or philosophy, whether it be laws or customs, primitive art or primitive science, everywhere, you have to go to India, whether you like it or not, because some of the most valuable and most instructive materials in the history of man are treasured up in India, and in India only.

There is no book in the world that is so thrilling, stirring and inspiring as the Upanishads.

The gospel is the fulfillment of all hopes, the perfection of all philosophy, the interpretation of all revelation, the key to all the seeming contradictions of the physical and moral world.

If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most fully developed some of its choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered on the greatest problems of life, and has found solutions, I should point to India.

When the evil deed, after it has become known, brings sorrow to the fool, then it destroys his bright lot, nay, it cleaves his head.

The first pages of memory are like the old family Bible. The first leaves are wholly faded and somewhat soiled with handling. But, when we turn further, and come to the chapters where Adam and Eve were banished from Paradise, then, all begins to grow clear and legible.

No one who has not examined patiently and honestly the other religions of the world can know what Christianity really is, or can join with such truth and sincerity in the words of St. Paul, I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ.

All ancient books which have once been called sacred by man, will have their lasting place in the history of mankind, and those who possess the courage, the perseverance, and the self-denial of the true miner, and of the true scholar, will find even in the darkest and dustiest shafts what they are seeking for,-real nuggets of thought, and precious jewels of faith and hope.

And then when all around grows dark, when we feel utterly alone, when all men right and left pass us by and know us not, a forgotten feeling rises in the breast.

Language is the Rubicon that divides man from beast.

The scent of flowers does not travel against the wind; but the odor of good people travels; even against the wind: a good man pervades every place.

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 .

That deed is not well done of which a man must repent, and the reward of which he receives crying and with a tearful face.

It smote me to the heart that I had found no one in all the world who loved me more than all others.

I was shortly again at the castle, and the Princess gave me her hand to kiss and then brought her children, the young princes and princesses, and we played together, as if we had known each other for years.

And if I were to ask myself from what literature we who have been nurtured almost exclusively on the thoughts of Greeks and Romans, and of the Semitic race, the Jewish, may draw the corrective which is most wanted in order to make our inner life more perfect, more comprehensive, more universal, in fact more truly human a life ... again I should point to India.

Self is the lord of self, who else could be the lord?.

Would not the child's heart break in despair when the first cold storm of the world sweeps over it, if the warm sunlight of love from the eyes of mother and father did not shine upon him like the soft reflection of divine light and love?

Soon the child learns that there are strangers, and ceases to be a child.

Of these years nought remains in memory but the sad feeling that we have advanced and only grown older.

Not far from our house, and opposite the old church with the golden cross, stood a large building, even larger than the church, and having many towers.

Universities were not meant entirely, or even chiefly, as stepping-stones to an examination, but that there is something else which universities can teach and ought to teach-nay, which I feel quite sure they were originally meant to teach-something that may not have a marketable value before a Board of Examiners, but which has a permanent value for the whole of our life, and that is a real interest in our work, and, more than that, a love of our work, and, more than that, a true joy and happiness in our work ...

I was so astonished that another had penetrated so deeply into the secrets of my soul, and that he knew what I did not know myself, that when I recovered from it he had already been long upon the street.

While the river of life glides along smoothly, it remains the same river; only the landscape on either bank seems to change.

For self is the lord of self, self is the refuge of self; therefore curb thyself as the merchant curbs a good horse.

The wise who control their body, who control their tongue, the wise who control their mind, are indeed well controlled.

It is better to live alone, there is no companionship with a fool.

I spend my happiest hours in reading Vedantic books. They are to me like the light of the morning, like the pure air of the mountains - so simple, so true, if once understood.