Sri Aurobindo Quotes

The wretched have no compassion, they can do good only from strong principles of duty.

Duty does not consist in suffering everything, but in suffering everything for duty. Sometimes, indeed, it is our duty not to suffer.

Stern daughter of the voice of God! O Duty! if that name thou love Who art a light to guide, a rod To check the erring and reprove.

The idea of duty--that recognition of something to be lived for beyond the mere satisfaction of self--is to the moral life what the addition of a great central ganglion is to animal life.

duty, the most indecent of all obsessions, was only another name for love.

If the past is not to bind us, where can duty lie? We should have no law but the inclination of the moment.

Mine was a trained Presbyterian conscience and knew but the one duty - to hunt and harry its slave upon all pretexts and on all occasions, particularly when there was no sense nor reason in it.

Duty is what goes most against the grain, because in doing that we do only what we are strictly obliged to, and are seldom much praised for it.

The idea of duty, that recognition of something to be lived for beyond the mere satisfaction of self, is to the moral life what the addition of a great central ganglion is to animal life. No man can begin to mould himself on a faith or an idea without rising to a higher order of experience: a principle of subordination, of self-mastery, has been introduced into his nature; he is no longer a mere bundle of impressions, desires, and impulses.

Nothing, that is say no one, can be such an inexorable tour-conductor as one's own conscience or sense of duty, if one allows either the upper hand: the self-bullying that goes on in the name of sight-seeing is grievous.

Obligation may be stretched till it is no better than a brand of slavery stamped on us when we were too young to know its meaning.

Reason shows us our duty; he who can make us love our duty is more powerful than reason itself.

The doing of things from duty is but a stage on the road to the kingdom of truth and love.

I urge you by all this is dear, by all that is honorable, by all that is sacred, not only that you pray but also that you act!

I believe that we don't need to worry about what happens after this life, as long as we do our duty here-to love and to serve.

Duty is whatever opposes inclination.

Compulsion precedes morality, indeed morality itself is compulsion for a time, to which one submits for the avoidance of pain.

We need to restore the full meaning of that old word, duty. It is the other side of rights.

We all have the duty to do good.

It is a sin not to do what one is capable of doing.

The moral law commands us to make the highest possible good in a world the final object of all our conduct.

And if the great fear had not come upon me, as it did, and forced me to do my duty, I might have been less good to the people than some man who had never dreamed at all, even with the memory of so great a vision in me.

Rights that do not flow from duty well performed are not worth having.

It is seldom very hard to do one's duty when one knows what it is, but it is often exceedingly difficult to find this out.

In doing what we ought we deserve no praise, because it is our duty.