Quotes from The Mahabharata

Quotations follow the Ramesh Menon translation (Rupa, 2004) — our recommended edition.

1. 2

   You have a right to your action, never to its fruits.

2. 3

   Whatever is here may be found elsewhere; whatever is not here is nowhere.

3. 4

   Thou seest Me as Time who kills, Time who brings all to doom, The Slayer Time, Ancient of Days, come hither to consume.

4. 5

   Never the spirit was born; the spirit shall cease to be never; Never was time it was not; End and Beginning are dreams!

5. 6

   Do not do to another what is disagreeable to yourself: this is the summary Law.

6. 7

   Let right deeds be thy motive, not the fruit which comes from them.

7. 8

   Day after day countless creatures are going to the abode of Yama, yet those that remain behind believe themselves to be immortal. What can be more wonderful than this?

8. 9

   Whatever is here, is found elsewhere. But what is not here, is nowhere else.

9. 10

   When Righteousness Declines, O Bharata! when Wickedness Is strong, I rise, from age to age, and take Visible shape, and move a man with men, Succouring the good, thrusting the evil back, And setting Virtue on her seat again.

10. 11

    Nay, but as when one layeth His worn-out robes away, And, taking new ones, sayeth, 'These will I wear to-day!' So putteth by the spirit Lightly its garb of flesh, And passeth to inherit A residence afresh.

11. 12

    Threefold is this way to hell: lust, anger, and avarice; these three are destructive of the self; therefore one should renounce them.

12. 13

    When the Gods deal defeat to a person, they first take his mind away, so that he sees things wrongly.

13. 14

    There is no duty superior to the duty of abstention from injuring other creatures.

14. 15

    The intoxication with power is worse than drunkenness with liquor and the like, for he who is drunk with power does not come to his senses before he falls down.

15. 16

    Anger must be conquered by forgiveness; the wicked by honesty; the miser by liberality, and falsehood by truth.

16. 17

    With gentleness one defeats the gentle as well as the hard; there is nothing impossible to the gentle.

17. 18

    There is no shelter like the mother. There is no resort like the mother. There is no defence like the mother. There is no one so dear as the mother.

18. 19

    A gray head does not make an elder. The Gods know him to be an elder who, though young, has learning.

19. 20

    Once war has been undertaken, no peace is made by pretending there is no war.

20. 21

    AUM! I bow down to Narayana and Nara, the most exalted male beings, and also to the goddess Saraswati, and then let success crown my work.

21. 22

    Discontent is the root of fortune.

22. 23

    From Righteousness is Wealth as also Pleasure. Why should not Righteousness, therefore, be courted?