Quotes from I Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Nisargadatta Maharaj ·  550 pages

Rating: (3.7K votes)


“Love says 'I am everything.' Wisdom says 'I am nothing.' Between the two, my life flows.”
― Nisargadatta Maharaj, quote from I Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj


“Your expectation of something unique and dramatic, of some wonderful explosion, is merely hindering and delaying your Self Realization. You are not to expect an explosion, for the explosion has already happened - at the moment when you were born, when you realized yourself as Being-Knowing-Feeling. There is only one mistake you are making: you take the inner for the outer and the outer for the inner. What is in you, you take to be outside you and what is outside, you take to be in you. The mind and feelings are external, but you take them to be intimate. You believe the world to be objective, while it is entirely a projection of your psyche. That is the basic confusion and no new explosion will set it right! You have to think yourself out of it. There is no other way.”
― Nisargadatta Maharaj, quote from I Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj


“Love is not selective, desire is selective. In love there are no strangers. When the centre of selfishness is no longer, all desires for pleasure and fear of pain cease; one is no longer interested in being happy; beyond happiness there is pure intensity, inexhaustible energy, the ecstasy of giving from a perennial source.”
― Nisargadatta Maharaj, quote from I Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj


“To deal with things knowledge of things is needed. To deal with
people, you need insight, sympathy. To deal with yourself, you need
nothing. Be what you are--conscious being--and don't stray away from
yourself.”
― Nisargadatta Maharaj, quote from I Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj


“Truth is not a reward for good behaviour, nor a prize for passing some tests. It cannot be brought about. It is the primary, the unborn, the ancient source of all that is. You are eligible because you are. You need not merit truth. It is your own....Stand still, be quiet.”
― Nisargadatta Maharaj, quote from I Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj



“Love tells me, i am everything.
Wisdom tells me, i am nothing.
And in between flows my life.”
― Nisargadatta Maharaj, quote from I Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj


“Have your being outside this body of birth and death and all your problems will be solved. They exist because you believe yourself born to die. Undeceive yourself and be free. You are not a person.”
― Nisargadatta Maharaj, quote from I Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj


“All you need is already within you, only you must approach your self with reverence and love. Self-condemnation and self-disgust are grievous errors. Your constant flight from pain and search for pleasure is a sign of love you bear for your self, all I plead with you is this: make love of your self perfect. Deny your self nothing--give yourself infinity and eternity and discover that you do not need them; you are beyond.”
― Nisargadatta Maharaj, quote from I Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj


“Save all your energies and time for breaking the wall your mind has built around you.”
― Nisargadatta Maharaj, quote from I Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj


About the author

Nisargadatta Maharaj
Born place: in Bombay, India
Born date April 17, 1897
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“How many things have been denied one day, only to become realities the next!”
― Jules Verne, quote from From the Earth to the Moon


“So many answers flew through her mind that she didn't know which to pick, aside from the obvious truth that "my drug dealers enforcer and his rival who I used to fuck" was definitely not it.”
― Stacia Kane, quote from City of Ghosts


“She stayed out there, staring into the snow until the chevelle's engine noise faded into the distance. He was gone, and she was alone up there, alone and apart from the city so peaceful under it's snowy blanket. The buildings spreading from the edge of her roof were full of people, full of lives. Inside them lovers huddled together against the cold. Inside them families laughed or fought or whatever it was families did together. And here she stood, invisible, trapped, alone. And for the first she can remember alone didn't feel very good. And that was the scariest thing of all.”
― Stacia Kane, quote from Unholy Magic


“It is the duty of machines and those who design them to understand people. It is not our duty to understand the arbitrary, meaningless dictates of machines.”
― Donald A. Norman, quote from The Design of Everyday Things


“Yes, Eden was beautiful- and if I had to squeeze through corporeal keyholes to crash it- so be it. (Hasn’t it bothered you, this part of the story, my being there, I mean? What was I doing there? ‘Presume not the ways of God to scan,’ you’ve been told in umpteen variations, ‘the proper study of Mankind is Man.’ Maybe so, but what, excuse me, was the Devil doing in Eden?) I took the forms of animals. I found I could. (That’s generally my reason for doing something, by the way, because I find I can.)”
― Glen Duncan, quote from I, Lucifer


Interesting books

You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation
(4.8K)
You Just Don't Under...
by Deborah Tannen
Medea and Other Plays
(13.5K)
Medea and Other Play...
by Euripides
The Mane Event
(20.3K)
Journey by Moonlight
(3.2K)
Journey by Moonlight
by Antal Szerb
The Favorite Game
(2.9K)
The Favorite Game
by Leonard Cohen
Key of Light
(51.6K)
Key of Light
by Nora Roberts

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.