Tulsidas Quotes

Tulsidas was a Hindu Vaishnava saint and poet, often called reformer and philosopher from Ramanandi Sampradaya, in the lineage of Jagadguru Ramanandacharya renowned for his devotion to the Lord Shri Rama.

Tulsidas wrote several popular works in Sanskrit and Awadhi; he is best known as the author of the epic Ramcharitmanas, a retelling of the Sanskrit Ramayana based on Rama's life in the vernacular Awadhi dialect of Hindi. The Bhavishya Purana also predicts the incarnation of Shri Valmiki as Goswami Tulsidas in the Kaliyuga, in its verse and also explained in detail by H.G Shriman Chandra Govind Das of the Iskcon Temple.Tulsidas spent most of his life in the city of Varanasi. The Tulsi Ghat on the Ganges River in Varanasi is named after him. He founded the Sankatmochan Temple dedicated to Hanuman ji in Varanasi, believed to stand at the place where he had the sight of Hanuman ji. Tulsidas started the Ramlila plays, a folk-theatre adaption of the Ramayana.He has been acclaimed as one of the greatest poets in Hindi, Indian, and world literature. The impact of Tulsidas and his works on the art, culture and society in India is widespread and is seen to date in vernacular language, Ramlila plays, Hindustani classical music, popular music, and television series.

✵ 1532 – 1623
Tulsidas photo
Tulsidas: 29   quotes 6   likes

Famous Tulsidas Quotes

“No virtue is equal to the good of others and
no vice greater than hurting others.”

Tulsidas in "A Garden of Deeds: Ramacharitmanas, a Message of Human Ethics", p. 37

“In dependence, there is no happiness, even in a dream.”

Quoted in "A Garden of Deeds: Ramacharitmanas, a Message of Human Ethics" which principle Mahatma Gandhi adopted to give a national leadership motto, in P.7

“Faith in the Creator, who is mainly in his Godness and Godly in his man-ness, is like a human-self and can take him along.”

His counsel on Humanism in "A Garden of Deeds: Ramacharitmanas, a Message of Human Ethics", p. 32

“The Ramacharitamanas undoubtedly is the great poem worthy to rank among the great classical masterpieces of world literature.”

Source: On Tulsidas’s epic Ramacharritamanas, P.E.Keay in "A Garden of Deeds: Ramacharitmanas, a Message of Human Ethics", p. 35

“Mother and father abandoned me at birth and the author of my life also did not write any worth or merit on the page of destiny.”

His confessional statements on his own experiences made in Kavitavali quoted in "A Garden of Deeds: Ramacharitmanas, a Message of Human Ethics", p. 49

“[I] begged for crumbs and morsels door to door…Plodding and dawdling around lanes.”

In Kavitavali quoted in "A Garden of Deeds: Ramacharitmanas, a Message of Human Ethics", p. 106

Tulsidas Quotes about life

“There is no difference between knowledge and devotion,
Both of them save the soul from the miseries of worldly life.”

Tulsidas's philosophical approach, quoted in "Hindu spirituality: Postclassical and modern", p. 80

“Tuslidas’s attitude toward life and literature was distinctly more objective. Quite naturally, therefore, he has used the objective forms–the epic and the narrative- besides of course, the lyric as vehicles of his devotional poetry.”

K. R. Sundararajan in Hindu spirituality: Postclassical and modern http://books.google.co.in/books?id=LO0DpWElIRIC&pg=PA306&hl=en#v=onepage&q=Bhakti&f=false, p. 73

“Tulsidas was a poor recluse who lived an ascetic life and prompted by an inner light, adapted an old epic in folk-verse which broke all barriers and spread far and wide.”

Shiva Kumar Tripathi in "A Garden of Deeds: Ramacharitmanas, a Message of Human Ethics", p. 36

Tulsidas Quotes about faith

“Faith is that which dispels desire,
Devotion is that which generates knowledge.
And Vedas say that knowledge is that which fashions freedom.”

Tulsidas in "A Garden of Deeds: Ramacharitmanas, a Message of Human Ethics", p. 37

Tulsidas Quotes

“As the Ruler, so the people.”

Quoted in "A Garden of Deeds: Ramacharitmanas, a Message of Human Ethics", p. 5

“Mine is no caste or cult, what care I for one or the other…
No one is of any use to me, nor am I of any use to anyone.
Don’t have a son to need, someone’s daughter to wed.
Tulsi is the slave of Rama, whoever may say whatever he likes.
Begged for food, slept in a mosque, have nothing to take and nothing
to give, call me a swindler or a saint, call me a Rajput or a Julaha.”

A Muslim weaver is called a Julaha which Tusllidas preferred to be called, as he was brought up by a Muslim couple who were weavers who had picked him up and brought him up. Quoted in "A Garden of Deeds: Ramacharitmanas, a Message of Human Ethics", p. 106

“The world knows that to quell the belly-fire, I ate crumbs and morsels given by men of caste, high-caste, low-caste or no cast.”

In Kavitavali quoted in "A Garden of Deeds: Ramacharitmanas, a Message of Human Ethics", p. 72

“To follow the path of knowledge is to tread on the edge of a sword.
Once you get into it, there is no escape.”

Tulsidas's practical approach, quoted in "Hindu spirituality: Postclassical and modern", p. 80

“He walks without legs,
hears without ears,
does all the deeds without hands.
He enjoys all the juices without a mouth,
spells all the truth without a voice,
touches everything without hands.
He see very object without eyes
and inhales all the scents without a breath.”

Tulsidas’s definition of God in verse quoted in A Garden of Deeds: Ramacharitmanas, a Message of Human Ethics http://books.google.co.in/books?id=5em1y2PczVgC&pg=PA36, p. 36

“Am a servant of Rama,
Accredited to His Court,
What for should I
Be a Courier of man?”

A couplet he composed when he refused to accept the honour as one of the Ratna’s (Jewel) as a poet in the Imperial court of Akbar by his friend Abdurrahim Khan-i-Khana. Quoted in "A Garden of Deeds: Ramacharitmanas, a Message of Human Ethics", p. 54

“What did I not do, where did I not go, to whom did I not bow.”

In Vinay Patrika quoted in "A Garden of Deeds: Ramacharitmanas, a Message of Human Ethics", p. 276

“God refuses to be mine,
thine or his.
For him the truth is but one
but the proud and the vain have forged many out of their desires and fancies.”

Tulsidas in "A Garden of Deeds: Ramacharitmanas, a Message of Human Ethics", p. 36

“No poet in England has ever been in the masses what Tulsidas has been to the people of this land.”

Edwin Greaves, in "A Garden of Deeds: Ramacharitmanas, a Message of Human Ethics", p. 35
On Tulsidas’s epic Ramacharritamanas

“While Kabir’s or Dadu’s adherents may be numbered by hundreds of thousands, no less than ninety million Indians acknowledged him as their spiritual guide.”

Sir George Grierson noted this when Kabir and Dadu were Tulsidas’s contemporaries when the population of northern India at the time was about ninety million quoted in "A Garden of Deeds: Ramacharitmanas, a Message of Human Ethics", P.37

“It can be said without reservation that Tulsidas is the greatest to write in the Hindi language. Tulsidas was a Brahmin by birth and was believed to be a reincarnation of the author of the Sanskrit Ramayana, Valmiki.”

Constance Jones & James D. Ryan in Encyclopedia of Hinduism http://books.google.co.in/books?id=OgMmceadQ3gC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Encyclopedia+of+Hinduism+(Encyclopedia+of+World+Religions)&hl=en&sa=X&ei=6cYBU_iiIeuRiQfwgoDQBA&ved=0CCwQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Tuslidas&f=false, p. 456

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