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Never yet has a God been defined in terms which were not palpably self-contradictory and absurd never yet has a God been described so that a concept of Him was made possible to human thought.

Annie Besant

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Annie Besant
Age: 86 †
Born: 1847
Born: January 1
Died: 1933
Died: January 1
Editor
Essayist
Feminist
Journalist
Member Of The London School Board
Orator
Politician
Suffragist
Theosophist
Writer
London
England
Annie Wood Besant
Annie Wood
Annie Besant
Term
Absurd
Religion
Concept
Thought
Defined
Human
Concepts
Humans
God
Self
Atheism
Palpably
Made
Terms
Contradictory
Never
Possible
Described

More quotes by Annie Besant

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Purification is but the cleaning of the lamp-glass which hides the Light
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My first serious attempts at writing were made in 1868, and I took up two very different lines of composition I wrote some short stories of a very flimsy type, and also a work of a much more ambitious character, 'The Lives of the Black Letter Saints.'
Annie Besant
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What is the constitution of the universe? The universe is the manifestation of the divine thought the thought of God embodies itself in the thought-forms that we call worlds.
Annie Besant
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There is much, of course, in the exclusive claims of Christianity which make it hostile to other faiths.
Annie Besant
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The destruction of India's village system was the greatest of England's blunders.
Annie Besant
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Quick condemnation of all that is not ours, of views with which we disagree, of ideas that do not attract us, is the sign of a narrow mind, of an uncultivated intelligence. Bigotry is always ignorant, and the wise boy, who will become the wise man, tries to understand and to see the truth in ideas with which he does not agree.
Annie Besant
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Nothing but an imperious intellectual and moral necessity can drive into doubt a religious mind, for it is as though an earthquake shook the foundations of the soul, and the very being quivers and sways under the shock.
Annie Besant
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The Buddha over and over again spoke clearly and definitely on post-mortem states - as in his conversation with Vasetta.
Annie Besant
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Britons are good, though often brutal, colonists where they come into relations with entirely uncivilized tribes whose past is so remote as to be forgotten. But they trample with their heavy boots over the sensitive, delicate susceptibilities of an ancient, highly civilized and cultured nation, such as India.
Annie Besant
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Control of the tongue! Vital for the man who would try to tread the 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
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No soul that aspires can ever fail to rise no heart that loves can ever be abandoned. Difficulties exist only that in overcoming them we may grow strong, and they who have suffered are able to save.
Annie Besant
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Continents may break up, continents may emerge, but the human race is immortal in its origin and in its growth, and there is nothing to be afraid of, even if the foundations of the earth be moved.
Annie Besant
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Theosophy tries to bridge the gulf between Buddhism and Christianity by pointing to the fundamental spiritual truths on which both religions are built, and by winning people to regard the Buddha and the Christ as fellow-laborers, and not as rivals.
Annie Besant
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We have no right to pick out all that is noblest and fairest in man, to project these qualities into space, and to call them God. We only thus create an ideal figure, a purified, ennobled, 'magnified' Man.
Annie Besant
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Among the various vernaculars that are spoken in different parts of India, there is one that stands out strongly from the rest, as that which is most widely known. It is Hindi. A man who knows Hindi can travel over India and find everywhere Hindi-speaking people.
Annie Besant
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Strange indeed would it be if all the space around us be empty, mere waste void, and the inhabitants of Earth the only forms in which intelligence could clothe itself.
Annie Besant
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Never yet was a nation born that did not begin in the spirit, pass to the heart and the mind, and then take an outer form in the world of men.
Annie Besant
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In a deep metaphysical sense, all that is conditioned is illusory. All phenomena are literally 'appearances,' the outer masks in which the One Reality shows itself forth in our changing universe. The more 'material' and solid the appearance, the further is it from reality, and therefore the more illusory it is.
Annie Besant
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Premonitions, presentiments, the sensing of unseen presences and many allied experiences are due to the activity of the astral body and its reaction on the physical their ever-increasing frequency is merely the result of its evolution among educated people.
Annie Besant
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Science regards man as an aggregation of atoms temporarily united by a mysterious force called the life-principle. To the materialist, the only difference between a living and a dead body is that in the one case that force is active, in the other latent.
Annie Besant