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This coarse and insulting way of regarding woman, as though they existed merely to be the safety-valves of men's passions, and that the best men were above the temptation of loving them, has been the source of unnumbered evils.

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
Woman
Safety
Valve
Best
Loving
Coarse
Way
Merely
Insulting
Men
Atheism
Regarding
Source
Evils
Passion
Existed
Though
Passions
Unnumbered
Evil
Temptation
Valves

More quotes by Annie Besant

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Man is ever searching for the source whence he has come, searching for the life which is upwelling within him, immortal, nay, eternal and divine and every religion is the answer from the Universal Spirit to the seeking spirits of men that came forth from Him.
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In the light of reincarnation life changes its aspect, for it becomes the school of the eternal Man within us, who seeks therein his development, the Man that was and is and shall be, for whom the hour will never strike.
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Beauty is no dead thing. It is the manifestation of God in nature. There is not one object in nature untouched by man that is not beautiful, for God's manifestation is beauty. It shines through all His works, and not only in those that may give pleasure to man.
Annie Besant
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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.
Annie Besant
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Sun-worship and pure forms of nature-worship were, in their day, noble religions, highly allegorical but full of profound truth and knowledge.
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 highest Hindu intellectual training was based on the practice of yoga, and produced, as its fruit, those marvellous philosophical systems, the six Darshanas and the Brahma Sutras, which are still the delight of scholars and the inspiration of occultists and mystics.
Annie Besant
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The man of meditation is the man who wastes no time, scatters no energy, misses no opportunity.
Annie Besant
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I will suggest that the great aim of our education is to bring out of the child who comes into our hands every faculty that he brings with him, and then to try to win that child to turn all his abilities, his powers, his capacities, to the helping and serving of the community which is a part.
Annie Besant
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The mental body, like the astral, varies much in different people it is composed of coarser or of finer matter, according to the needs of the more or less unfolded consciousness connected with it. In the educated it is active and well-defined in the undeveloped it is cloudy and inchoate.
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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'Easter' is a movable event, calculated by the relative positions of sun and moon, an impossible way of fixing year by year the anniversary of a historical event, but a very natural and indeed inevitable way of calculating a solar festival. These changing dates do not point to the history of a man, but to the hero of a solar myth.
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
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The divine life is the spirit in everything that exists, from the atom to the archangel the grain of dust could not be were God absent from it the loftiest seraph is but a spark from the eternal fire, which is God. Sharers in one life all form one brotherhood. The immanence of God, the solidarity of man, such are the basic truths of theosophy.
Annie Besant
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When we realise our oneness with our RULER, then the matter shall have no longer power over us, and we shall see it as the unreality it is.
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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My own life in India, since I came to it in 1893 to make it my home, has been devoted to one purpose, to give back to India her ancient freedom.
Annie Besant
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Knowledge is essential to conquest only according to our ignorance are we helpless. Thought creates character. Character can dominate conditions. Will creates circumstances and environment.
Annie Besant
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Everyone knows the beautiful story of Abraham and the sacrifice of Isaac. How this noble father led his child to the slaughter how Isaac meekly submitted how the farce went on till the lad was bound and laid on the altar, and how God then stopped the murder, and blessed the intending murderer for his willingness to commit the crime.
Annie Besant
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If we believe in a God at all, we must surely ascribe to him perfection of wisdom and perfection of goodness we are then forced to conceive of Him - however strange it may sound to those who believe, not only without seeing but also without thinking - as without will, because He must always necessarily pursue the course which is wisest and best.
Annie Besant