Wisdom
Here are all the articles — quotes from the wise along with short commentary on topics like building character, discovering purpose and happiness, love, making conscious choices, and more.
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All Articles
It’s All In The Small Things
“If you really want to judge the character of a man, look not at his great performances… Watch a man do his most common actions; those are indeed the things which will tell you the real character of a great man. Great occasions rouse even the lowest of human beings
The Shortcut Is Often the Longer Route
“Labour, however vast, ought not to have any terrors for a scholar, still less for a Hindu scholar; yet before one engages in it, one requires to be assured that the game is worth the candle.” — Sri Aurobindo A group of scholars intended to study an epic of the
Ignore The Unqualified Critic
“If you read the Vedas, you will find this word always repeated – ‘fearlessness’ – fear nothing. Fear is a sign of weakness. A man must go about his duties without taking notice of the sneers and the ridicule of the world.” — Swami Vivekananda How should I overcome my
Think Using First Principles
“To most people, thinking is but a reaction. . . Then it is no longer thinking, for then it is uncreative. Most people say that they think but are blindly following their reactions; they have certain standards, certain ideas, according to which they act.” — J. Krishnamurti Often, our lives
The Real Meaning of Criticism
“If your attitude is one of [passive] acceptance, you live in fear of criticism, and when doubt arises, as it must arise, you carefully and sedulously destroy it. Yet it is only through doubt, through criticism, that you can fulfill; and the purpose of life is to fulfill, not to
The Goal-Free Method of Learning
When we face a problem, most of us resort to the means-end analysis. We compare the current state to the goal state and do what will move us closer to the goal. The challenge with this strategy is that you could get stuck in a loop where, if you find
Gain The Respect of The Strong
“Our first duty is not to hate ourselves; because to advance we must have faith in ourselves first and then in God. He who has no faith in himself can never have faith in God.” — Swami Vivekananda When Gandhiji was young, he would hang out with friends who were
You Can Do Anything, But Not Everything
“To find your vocation and keep it… is a simple and solid rule of life. We however prefer to give impartial expression to all our gifts, forgetting that the mind is as mortal and as much subject to wear and tear as any perishable thing, forgetting that specialism is one
What Is Character?
“If you take the character of any man, it really is but the aggregate of tendencies, the sum total of the bent of his mind; you will find that misery and happiness are equal factors in the formation of that character. . . [A]nd in some instances, misery is a
Wisdom Is The Sweetest Fruit
“If you want to be a Bhakta, it is not at all necessary for you to know whether Krishna was born in Mathurā or Vraja, what he was doing, or just the exact date on which he pronounced the teachings of the Gita. You only require to feel the craving