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Mahabharata Quotes

Browse 49 quotes about Mahabharata.

Mahabharata Quotes

“हे सारथे ! हैं द्रोण क्या, देवेन्द्र भी आकर अड़े, है खेल क्षत्रिय बालकों का व्यूह-भेदन कर लड़े। श्रीराम के हयमेध से अपमान अपना मान के, मख अश्व जब लव और कुश ने जय किया रण ठान के।।”

CourageWarriorsMahabharata
Book:जयद्रथ वध
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“An action carried out through human effort may be well planned, well performed and properly accomplished, and yet be thwarted by fate. But likewise a fated action, something not carried out by humans, may be frustrated by human effort, heir of Bharata, as happens with cold and heat, rain, hunger and thirst. And a man whose being is constrained by fate may none the less opt to carry out some different action, and fate does not prevent him from doing so.”

FateIndian CultureMahabharata
Book:Mahabharata
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“From anger arises delusion; from delusion, confusion of memory; from confusion of memory, loss of reason; and from loss of reason one goes to complete ruin. ( Chapter- II, Shloka- 63)”

ReasonPhilosophyIndianMahabharataBhagavad GitaBhagwad GeetaOvercoming Anger
Book:श्रीमद्भगवद्गीता पदच्छेद, अन्वय, साधारण भाषाटीकासहित
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“Therefore, do you perform your allotted duty; for action is superior to inaction. Desisting from action, you cannot even maintain your body. (Chapter-III, Shloka-8)”

PhilosophyDutyIndianKrishnaMahabharataArjunaBhagwad GeetaKarmayoga
Book:श्रीमद्भगवद्गीता पदच्छेद, अन्वय, साधारण भाषाटीकासहित
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“Therefore, perform your allotted duty; for action is superior to inaction. Desisting from action, you cannot even maintain your body. (Chapter-III, Shloka- 8)”

PhilosophyDutyIndianKrishnaMahabharataArjunaBhagwad GeetaKarmayoga
Book:श्रीमद्भगवद्गीता पदच्छेद, अन्वय, साधारण भाषाटीकासहित
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“A real education will not teach you to compete; it will teach you to cooperate. It will not teach you to fight and come first. It will teach you to be creative, to be loving, to be blissful, without any comparison with the other.. A real education will not teach you to be the first. It will tell you to enjoy whatsoever you are doing, not for the result but for the act itself. Just like a painter or a dancer or a musician…. You can paint in two ways. You can paint to compete with other painters; you want to be the greatest painter in the world, you want to be a Picasso or a Van Gogh. Then your painting will be second-rate, because your mind is not interested in painting itself; it is interested in being the first, the greatest painter in the world. You are not going deep into the art of painting. You are not enjoying it, you are only using it as a stepping- stone. You are on an ego trip. And the problem is: to really be a painter, you have to drop the ego completely. To really be a painter, the ego has to be put aside. Only then can God flow through you. Only then can he use your hands and your fingers and your brush. Only then something of superb beauty can be born. It is never BY you but only THROUGH you. Existence flows; you become only a passage. You allow it to happen, that's all; you don't hinder, that's all. But if you are too interested in the result, the ultimate result - that you have to become famous, that you have to win the Nobel Prize, that you have to be the first painter in the world, that you have to defeat all other painters hitherto - then your interest is not in painting; painting is secondary. And of course, with a secondary interest in painting you can't paint something original; it will be ordinary. Ego cannot bring anything extraordinary into the world; the extraordinary comes only through egolessness. And so is the case with the musician and the poet and the dancer. And so is the case with everybody. In the Gita, Krishna says: Don't think of the result at all. It is a message of tremendous beauty and significance and truth. Don't think of the result at all. Just do what you are doing with your totality. Get lost into it. Lose the doer in the doing. Don't be - let your creative energies flow unhindered. That's why he said to Arjuna, "Don't escape from the war... because I can see this is just an ego trip, this escape. The way you are talking simply shows that you are calculating: that you are thinking that by escaping from the war you will become a great mahatma. Rather than surrendering to God, to the whole, you are taking yourself too seriously: as if, if you are not there, there will be no war." Krishna says to Arjuna, "Listen to me. Just be in a state of let-go. Say to God, 'Use me in whatsoever way you want to use me. Use me! I am available, unconditionally available.' Then whatsoever happens through you will have a great authenticity about it. It will have intensity, it will have depth. It will have the impact of the eternal on it. It will be signed by God, not by you. And you will rejoice because God has chosen you to be a vehicle.”

EnjoyCreativityEgoEducation SystemMahabharataVan GoghArjunaEgo TripLord KrishnaPicasso
Author:Osho
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“He who has given up all desires, and moves free from attachment, egoism and thirst for enjoyment attains peace. (Chapter- II, Shloka- 71)”

PhilosophyPeaceDetachmentKrishnaEgoismMahabharataBhagavad GitaBhagwad Geeta
Book:श्रीमद्भगवद्गीता पदच्छेद, अन्वय, साधारण भाषाटीकासहित
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“The greatest book in the world, the Mahabharata, tells us we all have to live and die by our karmic cycle. Thus works the perfect reward-and-punishment, cause-and-effect, code of the universe. We live out in our present life what we wrote out in our last. But the great moral thriller also orders us to rage against karma and its despotic dictates. It teaches us to subvert it. To change it. It tells us we also write out our next lives as we live out our present. The Mahabharata is not a work of religious instruction. It is much greater. It is a work of art. It understands men will always fall in the shifting chasm between the tug of the moral and the lure of the immoral. It is in this shifting space of uncertitude that men become men. Not animals, not gods. It understands truth is relative. That it is defined by context and motive. It encourages the noblest of men - Yudhishtra, Arjuna, Lord Krishna himself - to lie, so that a greater truth may be served. It understands the world is powered by desire. And that desire is an unknowable thing. Desire conjures death, destruction, distress. But also creates love, beauty, art. It is our greatest undoing. And the only reason for all doing. And doing is life. Doing is karma. Thus it forgives even those who desire intemperately. It forgives Duryodhana. The man who desires without pause. The man who precipitates the war to end all wars. It grants him paradise and the admiration of the gods. In the desiring and the doing this most reviled of men fulfils the mandate of man. You must know the world before you are done with it. You must act on desire before you renounce it. There can be no merit in forgoing the not known. The greatest book in the world rescues volition from religion and gives it back to man. Religion is the disciplinarian fantasy of a schoolmaster. The Mahabharata is the joyous song of life of a maestro. In its tales within tales it takes religion for a spin and skins it inside out. Leaves it puzzling over its own poisoned follicles. It gives men the chance to be splendid. Doubt-ridden architects of some small part of their lives. Duryodhanas who can win even as they lose.”

LifeReligionMahabharata
Book:The Alchemy of Desire
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“Widespread criticisms of jihad in Islam and the so-called sword verses in the Quran have unearthed for fair-minded Christians difficult questions about Christianity's own traditions of holy war and 'texts of terror.' Like Hinduism's Mahabharata epic, the Bible devotes entire books to war and rumors thereof. Unlike the Quran, however, it contains hardly any rules for how to conduct a just war.”

ReligionChristianityBibleIslamHinduismHoly WarMahabharata
Book:God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World--and Why Their Differences Matter
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“Suddenly Yudhisthira saw a yaksha approaching him. The being sat in front of him and began firing questions rapidly at him. What is bigger than the Earth? the yaksha asked. "A mother" replied Yudhisthira. What is taller than the sky? "A father" What is faster than the wind? "The mind , of course". Yudhisthira smiled. What grows faster than hay? "Worry" What is the greatest dharma in the world? queried the yaksha "Compassion and conscience" With who is friendship never-ending? "With good people" responded Yudhisthira patiently. What is the secret to never feeling unhappy? "If one can control his or her mind, then that person will never feel sad" The yaksha increase his pace now. What is the greatest kind of wealth. "Education" What is the greatest kind of profit? "Health" What is the greatest kind of happiness? "Contentment" said Yudhisthira, ever prompt with his replies. What is man's worst enemy? "Anger" What disease will never have a cure? "Greed is incurable" The yaksha smiled again. A last question my friend. What is life's biggest irony? "It is the desire to live eternally. Every day, we encounter people dying but we always think that death will never come to us.”

Indian CultureMahabharataPandavaIndian MythologyIndian Lore
Book:The Serpent's Revenge: Unusual Tales from the Mahabharata
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“The day the Pandavas received the Akshaya Patra from the sun god is still celebrated in India as Akshaya Tritiya, which comes every year during the spring harvest in April or May. It is an extremely auspicious day and people believe that whatever they buy that day will grow in value. Most people prefer to purchase gold on this day”

Indian CultureMahabharataPandavaIndian MythologyIndian Lore
Book:The Serpent's Revenge: Unusual Tales from the Mahabharata
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“If I was asked what is the greatest treasure which India possesses and what is her finest heritage, I would answer unhesitatingly that it is the Samskrit language and literature and all that it contains. This is a magnificent inheritance and so long as this endures and influences the life of our people, so long will the basic genius of India continue. If our race forgot the Buddha, the Upanishads and the great epics (Ramayana and Mahabharata), India would cease to be India .”

PeopleIfsLongLiteratureLanguageAnswersRaceInfluenceGeniusIndiaEndureTreasureCeaseHeritageMagnificentEpicFinestInheritanceMahabharataGreatest Treasure
Author:Jawaharlal Nehru
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“A scene of Mahabharata where the Surya Devta(Sun God)would come to bless Kunti with a baby The child watching this on TV says "I have been taught that Neil Armstrong had taken several days to reach the moon.Surya Devta took only half a minute to land up in the Kunti's room; that too, he didn't even need a rocket-he had simply walked. Science and Sanskrit had always appeared contradicting subjects to me at school:-)”

NeedsChildrenHas BeensSchoolRoomsHalfSunTakenLandMinutesSubjectsTaughtTvsBabySceneMoonBlessRocketsArmstrongContradictingSanskritMahabharataSun God
Author:Ravinder Singh
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