Quotes from Yayati: A Classic Tale of Lust

“Gods are addicted to the pleasures and the demons are blindly worshipping power.”
― Vishnu Sakharam Khandekar, quote from Yayati: A Classic Tale of Lust

“A creeper has many flowers; some are offered to God in worship and so arouse devotion. Some adorn the lovely ringlets of maidens and are silent witnesses to the hours of love and pleasures indulged in. The same is true of humans born in this world. Some live to be old and some rise to honour and fame and some are crushed by poverty. But in the end, all these flowers fall to the ground and are lost in the earth.”
― Vishnu Sakharam Khandekar, quote from Yayati: A Classic Tale of Lust

“The world errs, even realises the errors, but seldom learns from them.”
― Vishnu Sakharam Khandekar, quote from Yayati: A Classic Tale of Lust

“never forget that it is easier to conquer the world than to master the mind ...”
― Vishnu Sakharam Khandekar, quote from Yayati: A Classic Tale of Lust

“We are all a little wiser towards the end of our lives and the wisdom often comes from the pain suffered by oneself.”
― Vishnu Sakharam Khandekar, quote from Yayati: A Classic Tale of Lust

“Good and evil are imaginary concepts put out by clever men and fools. In this world, only happiness and misery are real. Everything else is delusion. Good and bad are appearances ... the play of the mind.”
― Vishnu Sakharam Khandekar, quote from Yayati: A Classic Tale of Lust

“In happiness and misery, remember one thing. Sex and wealth are the great symbols of manhood. They are inspiring symbols. They sustain life. But they are unbridled. There is no knowing when they will run amuck. Their reins must at all times be in the hands of duty.’ Oh man, desire is never satisfied by indulgence. Like the sacrificial fire, it ever grows with every offering.”
― Vishnu Sakharam Khandekar, quote from Yayati: A Classic Tale of Lust

“Mother was still brooding over the loss of her offspring many years ago but the same mother could cheerfully look upon the death of a mother bird. She had admiration for her son who had killed that innocent bird. She could partake of the dead mother’s meat with relish. I was baffled by this contradiction in life.”
― Vishnu Sakharam Khandekar, quote from Yayati: A Classic Tale of Lust

“In this world everybody obviously lives for himself. As the roots of the trees and creepers turn to moisture nearby, so do men and women look for support to near relations for their happiness. This is what the world calls love, affection or friendship. In fact, it is only the love of self. If the moisture on one side dries up, the trees and the creepers do not dry up, but their roots look for it elsewhere, be it far or near. They find it, draw it in and so remain”
― Vishnu Sakharam Khandekar, quote from Yayati: A Classic Tale of Lust

“Oh little leaf, why should you grieve over this sudden death? You have in your own way contributed to the beauty of this tree. You have done your part in giving your little shade to us. Your life is fulfilled and your place in Heaven is secure.”
― Vishnu Sakharam Khandekar, quote from Yayati: A Classic Tale of Lust

“life is such. It is sweet and beautiful but no one knows how and when it will be infected.’ He paused in deep thought and recited a verse which said, ‘In life, it is the sweet fruit that is most likely to be infested.”
― Vishnu Sakharam Khandekar, quote from Yayati: A Classic Tale of Lust

“Yayati, one day you will be king. You will be a sovereign. You will celebrate a hundred sacrifices. But never forget that it is easier to conquer the world than to master the mind ...”
― Vishnu Sakharam Khandekar, quote from Yayati: A Classic Tale of Lust

“No matter how sweet or mysterious it was, it was still the tiny world of a bud yet to blossom. That world had not yet awakened to the humming of the bees. The soft caress of the golden warm rays of the sun was foreign to it. The bud had not opened to look on the vast expanse of the sky. It had not yet known even in a dream the entrancing grace of the carved image of the Goddess or the lure of black tresses, the crowning glory of a beautiful maiden. A bud cannot forever remain a bud. Blossom it must into maturity.”
― Vishnu Sakharam Khandekar, quote from Yayati: A Classic Tale of Lust

“In happiness and misery, remember one thing. Sex and wealth are the great symbols of manhood. They are inspiring symbols. They sustain life. But they are unbridled. There is no knowing when they will run amuck. Their reins must at all times be in the hands of duty.”
― Vishnu Sakharam Khandekar, quote from Yayati: A Classic Tale of Lust

“In human life, the soul is the passenger, the body the chariot, conscience the charioteer and mind the reins. The different senses are the horses, all the items of enjoyment are the roads, and the soul with senses and the mind attached to it has to use them. If there is no chariot, where will the soul sit? How will he get to the battlefield of life quickly? How will he fight the enemy? Therefore, one must not underrate the importance of the chariot i.e., the body.”
― Vishnu Sakharam Khandekar, quote from Yayati: A Classic Tale of Lust

“We are all a little wiser towards the end of our lives and the wisdom often comes from the pain suffered by oneself. A”
― Vishnu Sakharam Khandekar, quote from Yayati: A Classic Tale of Lust

“As the beauty of a woman is enhanced with modesty, so are wealth and desire when allied to dharma.”
― Vishnu Sakharam Khandekar, quote from Yayati: A Classic Tale of Lust

“कोणत्याही प्रकारचा उन्माद म्हणजे मृत्यू! नेहमीच्या मृत्यूहून हा मृत्यू फार भयंकर असतो. कारण, त्यात माणसाचा आत्माच मृत होतो. ह”
― Vishnu Sakharam Khandekar, quote from Yayati: A Classic Tale of Lust

“There are only two witnesses in this world to good and bad, to truth and falsehood and to right and wrong, Kacha used to say. One is conscience and the other is omniscient God.”
― Vishnu Sakharam Khandekar, quote from Yayati: A Classic Tale of Lust

“The joy of dying for someone else is a hundred times greater than the joy of living for oneself. What a great and noble truth this is! But, for the first time today, it was revealed to me.”
― Vishnu Sakharam Khandekar, quote from Yayati: A Classic Tale of Lust

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Popular quotes

“Each society–each group within each society–chooses something with which to assign inferiority. In China it is the time of birth and the size of feet. In Europe it is the Jews; in England, the Irish. Among the powerful, it is the powerless; among the rich, it is the poor; among the men, it is the women. In this “new” country, that will also be true. In reverse, there is often a vehement hatred by an oppressed group toward the ones it sees as representatives of oppression. The oppressed view their own feelings of contempt as nobler than the contempt they receive, and more justified. They view their own hatred as right and pure. They nurture it, and bequeath it to their children, and sometimes see to it that it is carried on for generations.”
― Nell Gavin, quote from Threads: The Reincarnation of Anne Boleyn

“It's refreshing to be insane. Just as it's liberating to be aware of it.”
― Jonathan Maberry, quote from The Dragon Factory

“...I had spent hours talking with people who had trouble believing. For some, the issue was that they believed less than they thought they should about Jesus. They were not trouble by the idea that he may have had two human parents instead of one or that his real presence with his disciples after his death might have been more metaphysical than physical. The glory they beheld in him had more to do with the nature of his being than with the number of his miracles, but they had suffered enough at the hands of true believers to learn to keep their mouths shut.

For others, the issue was that they believed more than Jesus. Having beheld his glory, they found themselves running into God's glory all over the place, including places where Christian doctrine said that it should not be. I knew Christians who had beheld God's glory in a Lakota sweat lodge, in a sacred Celtic grove, and at the edge of a Hawaiian volcano, as well as in dreams and visions that they were afraid to tell anyone else about at all. These people not only feared being shunned for their unorthodox narratives, they also feared sharing some of the most powerful things that had ever happened to them with people who might dismiss them.

Given the history of Christians as a people who started out beholding what was beyond belief, this struck me as a lamentable state of affairs, both for those who have learned to see no more than they are supposed to see as well as for those who have excused themselves from traditional churches because they see too little or too much. If it is true that God exceeds all our efforts to contain God, then is it too big a stretch to declare that dumbfoundedness is what all Christians have most in common? Or that coming together to confess all that we do not know is at least as sacred an activity as declaring what we think we do know?”
― Barbara Brown Taylor, quote from Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith

“Se di me non sopravvivesse altro che l'odio. Se l'odio germogliare dalla mia fossa, un albero d'odio, esso sussurrerebbe: Achille la bestia. Se lo abbattessero, crescerebbe di nuovo. Se lo soffocassero, ogni filo d'erba farebbe suo quel messaggio: Achille la bestia, Achille la bestia. E ogni cantore che osasse cantare la gloria di Achille, morirebbe immediatamente tra i tormenti. Un abisso di disprezzo e di oblio tra le generazioni future e la bestia. Questo, Apollo, concedimi, se esisti. Non sarei vissuta invano.”
― Christa Wolf, quote from Cassandra: A Novel and Four Essays

“Religion may in most of its forms be defined as the belief that the gods are on the side of the Government. —Bertrand Russell”
― Graham E. Fuller, quote from A World Without Islam

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