Annie Besant Quotes (85 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

Source: Theosophical Review, Volume 17 http://books.google.co.in/books?id=nv8LAAAAIAAJ, p. 139
Source: https://www.theosophy.world/resource/ebooks/karma-annie-besant Karma

Birth , Death

“India demands Home Rule for two reasons, one essential and vital, the other less important but necessary: Firstly, because Freedom is the birthright of every Nation; secondly, because her most important interests are now made subservient to the interests of the British Empire without her consent, and her resources are not utilised for her greatest needs.”

Annie Besant

The Case for India: The Presidential Address http://books.google.co.in/books?id=qpoxAQAAMAAJ, p. 33

Home , Freedom

“The object of this book is to suggest certain lines of thought as to the deep truths underlying Christianity, truths generally overlooked, and only too often denied. The generous wish to share with all what is precious, to spread broadcast priceless truths, to shut out none from the illumination of true knowledge, has resulted in a zeal without discretion that has vulgarised Christianity, and has presented its teachings in a form that often repels the heart and alienates the intellect. The command to “preach the gospel to very creature” – though admittedly by doubtful authenticity – has been interpreted as forbidding the teaching of Gnosis to a few, and has apparently erased the less popular saying of the same Great Teacher “Give not that is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine.””

Annie Besant

In Esoteric Christianity: Or, The Lesser Mysteries http://books.google.co.in/books?id=XLUipprqQkAC&pg=PT2, p. 2

Truth , Swine , Knowledge , Heart

“Better remain silent, better not even think, if you are not prepared to act.”

Annie Besant

Encyclopaedia Indica: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Volume 100 http://books.google.co.in/books?id=xPsvAQAAIAAJ, p. 757

Thinking

“It is not monogamy when there is one legal wife, and mistresses out of sight.”

Annie Besant

Cultural and Religious Heritage of India: Islam http://books.google.co.in/books?id=e2yvoujPJCYC&pg=PA109, p. 109

“We find amongst animals, as amongst men, power of feeling pleasure, power of feeling pain; we see them moved by love and by hate; we see them feeling terror and attraction; we recognize in them powers of sensation closely akin to our own, and while we transcend them immensely in intellect, yet, in mere passional characteristics our natures and the animals' are closely allied. We know that when they feel terror, that terror means suffering. We know that when a wound is inflicted, that wound means pain to them. We know that threats bring to them suffering; they have a feeling of shrinking, of fear, of absence of friendly relations, and at once we begin to see that in our relations to the animal kingdom a duty arises which all thoughtful and compassionate minds should recognize - the duty that because we are stronger in mind than the animals, we are or ought to be their guardians and helpers, not their tyrants and oppressors, and we have no right to cause them suffering and terror merely for the gratification of the palate, merely for an added luxury to our own lives.”

Annie Besant

A speech given at Manchester UK (18 October 1897) https://ivu.org/history/besant/text.html

Love , Men , Pain , Hate

“Mysticism is the realisation of God, of the Universal Self. It is attained either as a realisation of God outside the Mystic, or within himself. In the first case, it is usually reached from within a religion, by exceptionally intense love and devotion, accompanied by purity of life, for only "the pure in heart shall see God."”

Annie Besant

Annie Besant Quotes

Love , Life , God , Religion

“But no one can eat the flesh of a slaughtered animal without having used the hand of a man as slaughterer. Suppose that we had to kill for ourselves the creatures whose bodies we would fain have upon our table, is there one woman in a hundred who would go to the slaughterhouse to slay the bullock, the calf, the sheep or the pig?”

Annie Besant

Humanimal http://books.google.co.in/books?id=KwmMAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA140, p. 140

Animals

“And thus daily, and month by month, and year by year, he will work at his mind, training it in these consecutive habits of thought, and he will learn to choose that of which he thinks; he will no longer allow thoughts to come and go; he will no longer permit a thought to grip him and hold him; he will no longer let a thought come into the mind and fix itself there and decline to be evicted; he will be master within his own house… he will say: “No; no such anxiety shall remain within my mind; no such thought shall have shelter within my mind; within this mind nothing stays that is not there by my choice and my invitation, and that which comes uninvited shall be turned outside the limits of my mind.”

Annie Besant

Source: https://theosophy.world/sites/default/files/ebooks/Annie%20Besant-In-The-Outer-Court.pdf In the Outer Court, 1895, p. 60

Thinking , Learning , Housing , Training

“There is no suffering for him who has finished his journey, and abandoned grief, who has freed him self on all sides, and thrown off all fetters.”

Annie Besant

p. 162

Suffering

“If people want to eat meat, they should kill the animals for themselves… Nor should they say that if they did not do it the slaughter would still go on… Every person who eats meat takes a share in that degradation of his fellow-men; on him and on her personally lies the share, and personally lies the responsibility.”

Annie Besant

Vegetarianism in the Light of Theosophy(1913), p. 18-20

Men , People , Animals , Personality

“My own life in India, since I came to it in 1893 to make it my home, has been devoted to one purpose, to give back to India her ancient freedom.”

Annie Besant

Indian critiques of Gandhi http://books.google.co.in/books?id=inhDAAAAYAAJ, p. 82

Life , Home , Freedom

“Thought is just not something objective in our heads. Thought is power – real, objective power. Moreover, the thoughts we create have a life of their own. They have a kind of material reality that affects other people for good or ill – hence our responsibility to chose.”

Annie Besant

The Power of Thought: A Twenty-First Century Adaptation of Annie Besant's http://books.google.co.in/books?id=SVKqq0dTdSMC&printsec=frontcover, p. backcover

Life , People , Reality

“The body is never more alive than when it is dead; but it is alive in its units, and dead in its totality; alive as a congeries, dead as an organism.”

Annie Besant

Death-And After http://books.google.co.in/books?id=0tIQ-MGW6F8C&pg=PA19, p. 19

Dead

“Evil is only imperfection, that which is not complete, which is becoming, but has not yet found its end.”

Annie Besant

The immediate future: Lectures delivered in Queen's Hall, London, 1911 http://books.google.co.in/books?id=VGNbAAAAMAAJ, p. 31

Evil

“Learning is all that mass of facts, and of judgments on the facts, and of conclusions drawn therefrom; wisdom is the extracted essence of the whole, that which the Soul has gathered out of all these experiences, and it is, as you are aware, its work in Devachan to turn these experiences into wisdom.”

Annie Besant

p. 55

Wisdom , Soul , Learning

“Against the teachings of eternal torture, of the vicarious influence theory of atonement, of the infallibility of the Bible, I leveled all the strength of my brain and tongue, and I exposed the history of the Christian Church with unsparing hand, its persecutions, its religious wars, its cruelties, its oppressions.”

Annie Besant

In, Annie Besant Quotes http://www.biographyonline.net/women/quotes/annie-besant-quotes.html

War , History

“Yet that is the most splendid privilege of man, that the true birthright of the human Spirit, to know his own Divinity, and then to realise it, to know his own Divinity and then to manifest it.”

Annie Besant

Source: The Theosophist, Volume 33 http://books.google.co.in/books?id=wJ9VAAAAYAAJ, p. 190

“Sun-worship and pure forms of nature worship were, in their day, noble religions, highly allegorical but full of profound truth and knowledge.”

Annie Besant

Source: Esoteric Christianity, Or The Lesser Mysteries http://books.google.co.in/books?id=6Uk0AHHn-cgC&pg=PT8, p. 8

Truth , Religion , Nature , Knowledge

“Liberty is a great celestial Goddess, strong, beneficent, and austere, and she can never descend upon a nation by the shouting of crowds, nor by arguments of unbridled passion, nor by the hatred of class against class.”

Annie Besant

The Political Thought of Annie Besant http://books.google.co.in/books?id=p-j4fWQxpGIC&pg=PA104, p. 104

Strong , Passion

“The true Mystic, realising God, has no need of any Scriptures, for he has touched the source whence all Scriptures flow.”

Annie Besant

The Theosophical Writings of Annie Besant http://books.google.co.in/books?id=eIrD4GQFCPIC&pg=PT437

God

“For centuries the leaders of Christian thought spoke of women as a necessary evil, and the greatest saints of the Church are those who despise women the most.”

Annie Besant

The Freethinker's Text Book: Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its ... http://books.google.co.in/books?id=9Ja-JNYYySYC&pg=PT262

Women , Evil

“In concentration, the consciousness is held to a single image; the whole attention of the Knower is fixed on a single point, without wavering or swerving.”

Annie Besant

Thought Power: Its Control and Culture, 1903 http://books.google.co.in/books?id=0ePGCV4K34sC&pg=PA79, p. 79

“Control of the tongue! Vital for the man who would try to tread the Noble Eightfold Path, for no harsh or unkind word, no hasty impatient phrase, may escape from the tongue which is consecrated to service, and which must not injure even an enemy; for that which wounds has no place in the Kingdom of Love.”

Annie Besant

Source: The Theosophist, Volume 33 http://books.google.co.in/books?id=wJ9VAAAAYAAJ, p. 183

Love

“Muhammadan law in its relation to women, is a pattern to European law. Look back to the history of Islam, and you will find that women have often taken leading places - on the throne, in the battle-field, in politics, in literature, poetry, etc.”

Annie Besant

Annie Besant Facts http://www.varanasi.org.in/annie-besant

Women , Law , History , Literature

“Looking at the Temple and the Courts and the mountain road that winds below, we see this picture of human evolution, and the track along which the race is treading, and the Temple that is its goal… along that road round the mountain stands a vast mass of human beings, climbing indeed, but climbing so slowly, rising step after step; sometimes it seems as though for every step forward there is a step backward, and though the trend of the whole mass is upwards it mounts so slowly that the pace is scarcely perceptible. And this aeonian evolution of the race, climbing ever upwards, seems so slow and weary and painful that one wonders how the pilgrims have the heart to climb so long…”

Annie Besant

p. 10

Pain , Mountain , Heart

“My heart revolts against the spectre of Almighty indifferent to the pain of sentient being. My conscience rebels against the injustice, the cruelty, the inequality that surrounds me on every side. But believe in man, in man’s redeeming power, in man’s remoulding energy, in man’s approaching triumph through knowledge, love and work.”

Annie Besant

Indian Political Thought, p. 191

Love , Pain , Knowledge , Heart

“C. W. Leadbeater”

Annie Besant

Esoteric Christianity (The Lesser Mysteries) (1914)

God , Religion , Study , Strong

“First he must gain control over his thoughts, the progeny of the restless, unruly mind, hard to curb as the wind. (Bhagavad Gitâ, vi. 34). Steady, daily practice in meditation, in concentration, had begun to reduce this mental rebel to order ere he entered on the probationary Path, and the disciple now works with concentrated energy to complete the task, knowing that the great increase in thought power that will accompany his rapid growth will prove a danger both to others and to himself unless the developing force be thoroughly under his control. Better give a child dynamite as a plaything, than place the creative powers of thought in the hands of the selfish and ambitious.”

Annie Besant

The Ageless Wisdom (1897)

Selfishness

“The habit of quiet, sustained, and sequential thought, directed to non-worldly subjects, of meditation, of study, develops the mind-body and renders it a better instrument; the effort to cultivate abstract thinking is also useful, as this raises the lower mind towards the higher, and draws into it the subtlest materials of the lower mental plane.”

Annie Besant

The Ageless Wisdom (1897)

Drawing , Thinking , Study , Effort

“As the origin and basis of all religions, it cannot be the antagonist of any: it is indeed their purifier, revealing the valuable inner meaning of much that has become mischievous in its external presentation by the perverseness of ignorance and the accretions of superstition; but it recognises and defends itself in each, and seeks in each to unveil its hidden wisdom.”

Annie Besant

The Ageless Wisdom (1897)

Religion , Wisdom

“The sacred books of the East are the best evidence for the greatness of their authors, for who in later days or in modern times can even approach the spiritual sublimity of their religious thought, the intellectual splendour of their philosophy, the breadth and purity of their ethic? And when we find that these books contain teachings about God, man, and the universe identical in substance under much variety of outer appearance, it does not seem unreasonable to refer to them to a central primary body of doctrine. To that body we give the name Divine Wisdom, in its Greek form: THEOSOPHY.”

Annie Besant

Source: The Ageless Wisdom (1897)

God , Time , Universe , Appearance

“It Suicide is the deliberate or the hurried action of the man who is trying to get out of a trouble and escape from it. Yet he cannot escape from it…He is wide awake on the other side of death, exactly the same man he was a moment before… no more changed than if he had merely taken off his coat. The result of his losing the physical body is that his capacity for suffering is very much increased…. All the part of him that drove him to suicide is there… The result of that is that he has still in him everything which made him commit the act; the consequence of this is that he keeps on committing it, going through the whole of the trouble that drove him up to the final act.”

Annie Besant

Source: Suicides and Compassion 1932, The Theosophist https://www.theosophyforward.com/index.php/theosophy/609-suicides-and-compassion.html (2012)

Suffering , Suicide , Death , Parting

“The world-Bibles, then, are fragments—fragments of Revelation, and therefore are rightly described as Revelation.”

Annie Besant

Source: Esoteric Christianity: Or, The Lesser Mysteries (1914), Chapter XIV. Revelation, p. 375

World

“The doctrines of the Resurrection and Ascension of Christ also form part of the Lesser Mysteries, being integral portions of "The Solar Myth," and of the life-story of the Christ in man.”

Annie Besant

Source: Esoteric Christianity: Or, The Lesser Mysteries (1914), Chapter VIII. Resurrection and Ascension

Life , Christ , Parting

“The time had come for one of those Divine manifestations which from age to age are made for the helping of humanity, when a new impulse is needed to quicken the spiritual evolution of mankind, when a new civilisation is about to dawn.”

Annie Besant

Source: Esoteric Christianity: Or, The Lesser Mysteries (1914), Chapter IV. The Historical Christ

Time , Help , Age

“The occult records partly endorse the story told in the Gospels, and partly do not endorse it; they show us the life, and thus enable us to disentangle it from the myths which are intertwined therewith.”

Annie Besant

Source: Esoteric Christianity: Or, The Lesser Mysteries (1914), Chapter IV. The Historical Christ

Life

“Many, perhaps most, who see the title of this book will at once traverse it, and will deny that there is anything valuable which can be rightly described as "Esoteric Christianity."”

Annie Besant

There is a wide-spread, and withal a popular, idea that there is no such thing as an occult teaching in connection with Christianity, and that "The Mysteries," whether Lesser or Greater, were a purely Pagan institution. The very name of "The Mysteries of Jesus," so familiar in the ears of the Christians of the first centuries, would come with a shock of surprise on those of their modern successors, and, if spoken as denoting a special and definite institution in the Early Church, would cause a smile of incredulity.
Source: Esoteric Christianity: Or, The Lesser Mysteries (1914), Chapter I. The Hidden Side of Religions

Books

“Those who are willing to work, those who are willing to toil, those who are willing to sacrifice, they shall be the peaceful army that He shall lead to the conquest of the great ideal Society, which they shall build under His direction and make practicable under His inspiration; and they, perhaps more than any other proof, are the sign of the new departure, are the welcome and the heralds of the coming Teacher.”

Annie Besant

Source: Initiation, The Perfecting of Man 1923, p. 148

Teachers , Making love , Peace , Departure

“May you be able to overclimb the obstacles custom, tradition, thoughtlessness, and habit have built up; may even such poor words as mine win you to the realization that there is no joy in life like the joy of discipleship, no so-called sacrifice that can be made which is not as the dross cast into the fire where gold comes out instead; oh! that in the hearts of even a few of you — one here and there scattered through this vast audience — the feeble words may light the eternal flame, and the passing movement caused by speech may grow into resolute will and a determined endeavor. Oh, then for you, too, in the near future there awaits the Finding of the Master, for you also who seek shall find; if you knock with the hammer of these Qualifications, surely the door shall swing open before you, that you may find Him, as I have been blessed enough to find Him, that you may know that service which is perfect freedom, that joy which is in the presence of the Master.”

Annie Besant

Source: Initiation, The Perfecting of Man, 1923, p. 83

Freedom , Light , Future , Heart

“And so this great Teacher has traced out for us the Qualifications demanded for passing through the first portal of Initiation, for that Birth of the Christ in the human Spirit, which is the passing of that doorway. I have run over, roughly and inadequately I know, the wonderful teaching which comes from Him to illuminate us, but none the less you can see it is an exacting demand, none the less you will see how you must shake yourself free from many prejudices, customs, thoughtless ways of life, if you would find the Master and be reckoned by Him among His disciples. p. 82”

Annie Besant

Source: Initiation, The Perfecting of Man (1923)