In literature and in art, alike, this gloomy fashion of regarding Death has been characteristic of Christianity. Death has been painted as a skeleton grasping a scythe, a grinning skull, a threatening figure with terrible face and uplifted dart, a bony scarecrow shaking an hourglass - all that could alarm and repel has been gathered round this rightly-named King of Terrors.

Annie Besant

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Better remain silent, better not even think, if you are not prepared to act.

Annie Besant

silent inspiring thinking

There is no life without consciousness; there is no consciousness without life.

Annie Besant

positive inspirational life

India is the mother of religion. In her are combined science and religion in perfect harmony, and that is the Hindu religion, and it is India that shall be again the spiritual mother of the world.

Annie Besant

spiritual mother perfect

Socialism is the ideal state, but it can never be achieved while man is so selfish.

Annie Besant

socialism selfish men

Someone ought to do it, but why should I? Someone ought to do it, so why not I? Between these two sentences lie whole centuries of moral evolution.

Annie Besant

responsibility two lying

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

essentials ignorance character

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

strong motivational inspirational

Out of right thinking comes right practice. It is not true that it does not matter what a man believes. It is not true to say, as many say, that a man's beliefs do not matter, it is only his conduct which is of importance; no lasting right conduct grows out of wrong belief. If you think falsely, you will act mistakenly; if you think basely, your conduct will suit your thinking.

Annie Besant

spiritual peace thinking

In a 50 mile radius around Chicago one can see the red aura of pain, agony, terror, anger from all the animals being butchered there.

Annie Besant

agony pain animal

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

wise men boys

When we recognise that unity of all living things, then at once arises the question - how can we support this life of ours with least injury to the lives around us; how can we prevent our own life adding to the suffering of the world in which we live?

Annie Besant

unity support suffering

Thought creates character.

Annie Besant

power-of-thought character

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

winning children hands

The man of meditation is the man who wastes no time, scatters no energy, misses no opportunity.

Annie Besant

meditation opportunity men

No philosophy, no religion, has ever brought so glad a message to the world as this good news of Atheism.

Annie Besant

atheist religious philosophy

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.

Annie Besant

leader christian evil

We learn much during our sleep, and the knowledge thus gained slowly filters into the physical brain, and is occasionally impressed upon it as a vivid and illuminative dream.

Annie Besant

dream brain sleep

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

philosophical yoga inspiration

No durable things are built on violent passion. Nature grows her plants in silence and in darkness, and only when they have become strong do they put their heads above the ground.

Annie Besant

passion silence strong

The true basis of morality is utility; that is, the adaptation of our actions to the promotion of the general welfare and happiness; the endeavour so to rule our lives that we may serve and bless mankind.

Annie Besant

our-actions morality may