Friedrich Max Müller Quotes

61. If a traveller does not meet with one who is his better, or his equal, let him firmly keep to his solitary journey; there is no companionship with a fool.

"These sons belong me, and this wealth belongs me," with such thoughts the fool is tormented. He himself does not belong to himself; how much less sons and wealth?

As a man journeying to another village may enjoy a night's rest in the open air, but, after leaving his resting-place, proceeds again on his journey the next day, thus father, mother, wife, and wealth are all but like a night's rest to us — wise people do not cling to them forever.

If a man find no prudent companion who walks with him, is wise, and lives soberly, let him walk alone, like a king who has left his conquered country behind — like an elephant in the forest. 330. It is better to live alone, there is no companionship with a fool; let a man walk alone, let him commit no sin, with few wishes, like an elephant in the forest.

As many kinds of wreaths can be made from a heap of flowers, so many good things may be achieved by a mortal when once he is born.

But, for all that, there is a Beyond, and he who has once caught a glance of it, is like a man who has gazed at the sun — wherever he looks, everywhere he sees the image of the sun. Speak to him of finite things, and he will tell you that the Finite is impossible and meaningless without the Infinite. Speak to him of death, and he will call it birth ; speak to him of time, and he will call it the mere shadow of eternity. To us the senses seem to be the organs, the tools, the most powerful engines of knowledge ; to him they are, if not actually deceivers, at all events heavy fetters, checking the flight of the spirit. To us this earth, this life, all that we see, and hear, and touch is certain. Here, we feel, is our home, here lie our duties, here our pleasures. To him this earth is a thing that once was not, and that again will cease to be ; this life is a short dream from which we shall soon awake. Of nothing he professes greater ignorance than of what to others seems to be most certain, namely what we see, and hear, and touch ; and as to our home, wherever that may be, he knows that certainly it is not here.

Now let us look to the ancient inhabitants of India. With them, first of all, religion was not only one interest by the side of many. It was the all-absorbing interest; it embraced not only worship and prayer, but what we call philosophy, morality, law, and government, — all was pervaded by religion. Their whole life was to them a religion — everything else was, as it were, a mere concession made to the ephemeral requirements of this life.

He only shows mankind how beautiful everything is which man's hand has not yet spoiled or broken.

As all have to sleep together laid low in the earth, why do foolish people wish to injure one another?

Childhood has its secrets and its mysteries; but who can tell or who can explain them!

Fishes never fly, and cats never catch frogs. These are the difficulties into which we are led ; and they arise simply and solely from our using words for their sound rather than for their meaning. We begin by playing with words, but in the end the words will play with us.

The missionaries have done far more than they themselves seem to be aware of, nay, much of the work which is theirs they would probably disclaim. The Christianity of our nineteenth century will hardly be the Christianity of India. But the ancient religion of India is doomed- and if Christianity does not step in, whose fault it be?

These two sciences. the Science of Language and the Science of Man, cannot. at least for the present, be kept too much asunder; and many misunderstandings, many controversies, would have been avoided. if scholars had not attempted to draw conclusions from language to blood, or from blood to language. When each of these sciences shall have carried out independently its own classification of men and languages, then, and then only, will it be time to compare their results; but even then, I must repeat, what I have said many times before, it would be as wrong to speak of Aryan blood as of dolichocephalic grammar.(61)

If I live for one purpose it is for this, that I will preach the union of Eastern and Western philosophy, the reconciliation of Europe and Asia. The idea may seem absurd to many in the present age. It may provoke ridicule and angry reviling. But posterity will prove a better judge.

If history is to teach us anything, it must teach us that there is a continuity which binds together the present and the past, the East and the West. And no branch of history teaches that lesson more powerfully than the history of language and the history of religion.