An Autobiography

by Mahatma Gandhi

The seeker after truth should be humbler than the dust. The world crushes the dust under its feet, but the seeker after truth should so humble himself that even the dust could crush him. Only then, and not till then, will he have a glimpse of truth.

God ultimately saves him whose motive is pure.

bad handwriting should be regarded as a sign of an imperfect education.

And he who would be friends with God must remain alone, or make the whole world his friend.

Only he Who is smitten with the arrows of love, Knows its power.

clean confession, combined with a promise never to commit the sin again, when offered before one who has the right to receive it, is the purest type of repentance.

Experience has taught me that silence is part of the spiritual discipline of a votary of truth.

God could be realized only through service.

the fact is that the child never learns in after life what it does in its first five years.

without infinite patience it was impossible to get the people to do any work.

The Lord has bound me With the cotton-thread of love, I am His bondslave,

public worker should accept no costly gifts.

He who runs to the doctor, vaidya or hakim for every little ailment, and swallows all kinds of vegetable and mineral drugs, not only curtails his life, but, by becoming the slave of his body instead of remaining its master, loses self-control, and ceases to be a man.

as a man eats, so shall he become.

Man and his deed are two distinct things. Whereas a good deed should call forth approbation and a wicked deed disapprobation, the doer of the deed, whether good or wicked, always deserves respect or pity as the case may be. ‘Hate the sin and not the sinner’ is a precept which, though easy enough to understand, is rarely practised, and that is why the poison of hatred spreads in the world.

God always protects the honest experimenter.

True beauty after all consists in purity of heart.

One should eat not in order to please the palate, but just to keep the body going.

in trying to enjoy the pleasures of sense, we lose in the end even our capacity for enjoyment. All this is passing before our very eyes, but there are none so blind as those who will not see.

A successful search for Truth means complete deliverance from the dual throng such as of love and hate, happiness and misery.

remember that even truthfulness in the practice of the profession cannot cure it of the fundamental defect that vitiates it.

am of opinion that the shame lies not so much in going to jail as in committing the offence.

The face of truth is hidden behind the golden veil of maya, says the Upanishad.

Service without humility is selfishness and egotism.

it is only when one sees one’s own mistakes with a convex lens, and does just the reverse in the case of others, that one is able to arrive at a just relative estimate of the two. I further believe that a scrupulous and conscientious observance of this rule is necessary for one who wants to be a Satyagrahi.

Truth can hardly convey an idea of the indescribable lustre of Truth, a million times more intense than that of the sun we daily see with our eyes.

and yet in all humility, that those who say that religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion means.

To attain to perfect purity one has to become absolutely passion-free in thought, speech and action; to rise above the opposing currents of love and hatred, attachment and repulsion.

So long as a man does not of his own free will put himself last among his fellow creatures, there is no salvation for him. Ahimsa is the farthest limit of humility.