70 quotes
A prophet is always much wider than his followers, much more liberal than those who label themselves with his name.
Refusal to believe until proof is given is a rational position; denial of all outside of our own limited experience is absurd.
Annie Besant: An Autobiography (1893)
Sun-worship and pure forms of nature worship were, in their day, noble religions, highly allegorical but full of profound truth and knowledge.
The Will of the Black Magician has the strength of iron, pointing ever to the personal end, and it strikes against the great Will, and sooner or later must shiver itself into pieces against it.
A Study in Consciousness: A Contribution to the Science of Psychology (1904)
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.
In the Outer Court (1895)
Better remain silent, better not even think, if you are not prepared to act.
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.
The result of his losing the physical body is that his capacity for suffering is very much increased.
That is the true definition of sin; when knowing right you do the lower, ah, then you sin. Where there is no knowledge, sin is not present.
Evil is only imperfection, that which is not complete, which is becoming, but has not yet found its end.
Empty-brained triflers who have never tried to think, who take their creed as they take their fashions, speak of atheism as the outcome of foul life and vicious desires.
Every person, every race, every nation, has its own particular keynote which it brings to the general chord of life and of humanity. Life is not a monotone but a many-stringed harmony, and to this harmony is contributed a distinctive note by each individual.
It is not monogamy when there is one legal wife, and mistresses out of sight.
The misery we inflict on sentient beings slackens our human evolution.
Vegetarianism in the Light of Theosophy (1913)
Cremation is preferable to burial as a way of disposing of corpses.
The Ancient Wisdom (1897)
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.
The true Mystic, realising God, has no need of any Scriptures, for he has touched the source whence all Scriptures flow.
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.
Meditation quiets the lower mind, ever engaged in thinking about external objects, and when the lower mind is tranquil then only can it be illuminated by the Spirit.
Nature gives to each in Devachan the satisfaction of all pure desires, and Manas there exercises that faculty of his innate divinity, that he “never wills in vain”. Will not this suffice?
Theosophical Manual No III: Death & After (1894)