Top 200 Sri Aurobindo Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “Pain is the hammer of the Gods to break a dead resistance in the mortal’s heart.”

— Sri Aurobindo

152. “Our actual enemy is not any force exterior to ourselves, but our own crying weaknesses, our cowardice, our selfishness, our hypocrisy, our purblind sentimentalism.”

— Sri Aurobindo

153. “Suffering makes us capable of the full force of the Master of Delight; it makes us capable also to bear the utter play of the Master of Power. Pain is the key that opens the gates of strength; it is the high-road that leads to the city of beatitude.”

— Sri Aurobindo

154. “Life, the river of the Spirit, consenting to anguish and sorrow.”

— Sri Aurobindo

155. “The existence of poverty is the proof of an unjust and ill-organised society, and our public charities are but the first tardy awakening in the conscience of a robber.”

— Sri Aurobindo

156. “Material things are not to be despised-without them there can be no manifestation in the material world.”

— Sri Aurobindo

157. “Man in the world’s life works out the dreams of God.”

— Sri Aurobindo

158. “Rather hang thyself than belong to the horde of successful imitators.”

— Sri Aurobindo

159. “In order to satisfy the vital being, it must be offered some activity, and at the same time the mind should be slowly made to take interest in yoga.”

— Sri Aurobindo

160. “To feed death with her works is here life’s doom.”

— Sri Aurobindo

161. “New sentient creatures filled the unseen depths, Life’s glory and swiftness ran in the beauty of beasts.”

— Sri Aurobindo

162. “What have I to forgive and whom?”

— Sri Aurobindo

163. “But though hast come and all will surely change.”

— Sri Aurobindo

164. “Yes, this Purusha consciousness must be maintained; otherwise the calm will not last. The knocks and blows that come from outside cannot disturb one, if this Purusha consciousness remains at the back.”

— Sri Aurobindo

165. “All kinds of indications will come from above and whatever you do must be referred to the Above.”

— Sri Aurobindo

166. “To have a developed intellect is always helpful if one can enlighten it from above and turn it to a divine use.”

— Sri Aurobindo

167. “For it is because he acts ignorantly, with a wrong intelligence and therefore a wrong will in these matters, that man is or seems to be bound by his works; otherwise works are no bondage to the free soul.”

— Sri Aurobindo

168. “What I cannot do now is the sign of what I shall do hereafter. The sense of impossibility is the beginning of all possibilities. Because this temporal universe was a paradox and an impossibility, therefore the Eternal created it out of His being.”

— Sri Aurobindo

169. “My God is love and sweetly suffers all.”

— Sri Aurobindo

170. “Thy goal, the road thou choosest are thy fate.”

— Sri Aurobindo

171. “A woman has the greatest opportunity to provide the best outcome for a baby and its potentialities. Not only by having a conscious and definite will to form the child accordingly to the highest ideal she can conceive, but first and foremost having the aspiration to work on herself.”

— Sri Aurobindo

172. “War is a dangerous teacher and physical victory leads often to a moral defeat.”

— Sri Aurobindo

173. “The Gita is the greatest gospel of spiritual works ever yet given to the race.”

— Sri Aurobindo

174. “That which we call the Hindu religion is really the Eternal religion because it embraces all others.”

— Sri Aurobindo

175. “No danger can perturb my spirit’s calm.”

— Sri Aurobindo

176. “To be free from all egoistic motive, careful of truth in speech and action, void of self-will and self-assertion, watchful in all things, is the condition for being a flawless servant.”

— Sri Aurobindo

177. “What comes from outside, one mistakes it as coming from inside. So many thoughts etc. move about outside in the universal – these manifest inside you. All these you must push away as foreign to you and the inside must be made peaceful, calm and quiet; then it will start descending from above.”

— Sri Aurobindo

178. “I spent quite sometime just watching enthralled, the gnarled hands of Mother Teresa in a portrait because those hands are associated with bringing comfort to the aged and abandoned in Kolkata’s streets. So they are beautiful.”

— Sri Aurobindo

179. “The anarchic is the true divine state of man in the end as in the beginning; but in between it would lead us straight to the devil and his kingdom.”

— Sri Aurobindo

180. “The most vital issue of the age is whether the future progress of humanity is to be governed by the modern economic and materialistic mind of the West or by a nobler pragmatism guided, uplifted and enlightened by spiritual culture and knowledge...”

— Sri Aurobindo

181. “I swore that I would not suffer from the world’s grief and the world’s stupidity and cruelty and injustice and I made my heart as hard in endurance as the nether millstone and my mind as a polished surface of steel. I no longer suffered, but enjoyment had passed away from me.”

— Sri Aurobindo

182. “To make a revolution is not in the grain of our people’s nature.”

— Sri Aurobindo

183. “An active mind needs an outlet. If it stops by itself from within, well and good; otherwise one should not try to stop this by force.”

— Sri Aurobindo

184. “An incense floated in the quivering air, A mystic happiness trembled in the breast As if the invisible Beloved had come Assuming the sudden loveliness of a face And close glad hands could seize his fugitive feet And the world change with the beauty of a smile.”

— Sri Aurobindo

185. “While doing work if the mind continues to be active let it be so, but there must be at the same time a capacity for silence.”

— Sri Aurobindo

186. “Propaganda is necessary only for the sake of money!”

— Sri Aurobindo

187. “In our defeated hearts God’s strength survives.”

— Sri Aurobindo

188. “All desires and egoism will have to be banished from the being.”

— Sri Aurobindo

189. “When thou findest thyself scorning another, look then at thy own heart and laugh at thy folly.”

— Sri Aurobindo

190. “Still the invisible Magnet drew his soul.”

— Sri Aurobindo

191. “You have a strong active nature. And this in you is a point of strength. If you can mould it rightly this will become a very great strength. On the other hand, this too is your weak point – a hindrance in sadhana.”

— Sri Aurobindo

192. “Metaphysical thinking will always no doubt be a strong element in her mentality, and it is to be hoped that she will never lose her great, her sovereign powers in that direction.”

— Sri Aurobindo

193. “The Force which has to be called down from above must be pure and quiet because there are all kinds of forces – it will not do to call them all. And one must have sincerity.”

— Sri Aurobindo

194. “We cannot afford to raise any institution to the rank of a fetish. To do so would be simply to become the slaves of our own machinery.”

— Sri Aurobindo

195. “Man’s freedom is relative and it cannot be held solely responsible for the imperfection of his nature.”

— Sri Aurobindo

196. “Samskrit language, as has been universally recognized by those competent to form a judgment, is one of the most magnificent, the most perfect, the most prominent and wonderfully sufficient literary instrument developed by the human mind.”

— Sri Aurobindo

197. “The desire of your vital being is towards work. And the vital being won’t find any interest in yoga so long as you do not have any experience of the higher and fuller life that is in yoga. As long as this experience is not there, the vital being will not find any interest.”

— Sri Aurobindo

198. “A fugitive paradise smiles at him from her eyes: He dreams of her beauty made for ever his, He dreams of his mastery her limbs shall bear, He dreams of the magic of her breasts of bliss.”

— Sri Aurobindo

199. “Yes, it is difficult for man to cross beyond the idea of duty.”

— Sri Aurobindo

200. “To attempt social reform, educational reform, industrial expansion, the moral improvement of the race without aiming, first and foremost, at political freedom is the very height of ignorance and futility.”

— Sri Aurobindo