Max Müller Quotes

57 Sourced Quotes

An evil deed is better left undone, for a man repents of it afterwards; a good deed is better done, for having done it, one does not repent.

Max Müller
Whatever sphere of the human mind you may select for your special study, whether it be language, or religion, or mythology, or philosophy, whether it be laws or customs, primitive art or primitive science, everywhere, you have to go to India, whether you like it or not, because some of the most valuable and most instructive materials in the history of man are treasured up in India, and in India only.

Max Müller
When the evil deed, after it has become known, brings sorrow to the fool, then it destroys his bright lot, nay, it cleaves his head.

Max Müller
He must be a man of little faith, who would fear to subject his own religion to the same critical tests to which the historian subjects all other religions. We need not surely crave a tender or merciful treatment for that faith which we hold to be the only true one. We should rather challenge it for the severest tests and trials, as the sailor would for the good ship to which he trusts his own life, and the lives of those who are dear to him. In the Science of Religion, we can decline no comparisons, nor claim any immunities for Christianity, as little as the missionary can, when wrestling with the subtle Brahmin, or the fanatical Mussulman, or the plain speaking Zulu.

Max Müller
He who, by causing pain to others, wishes to obtain pleasure for himself, he, entangled in the bonds of hatred, will never be free from hatred.

Max Müller
That is the returning to God which in reality is never concluded on earth but yet leaves behind in the soul a divine home sickness, which never again ceases.

Max Müller
How mankind defers from day to day the best it can do, and the most beautiful things it can enjoy, without thinking that every day may be the last one, and that lost time is lost eternity!

Max Müller
There will be and can be no rest till we admit, what cannot be denied, that there is in man a third faculty, which I call simply the faculty of apprehending the Infinite, not only in religion, but in all things; a power independent of sense and reason, a power in a certain sense contradicted by sense and reason; but yet, I suppose, a very real power, if we see how it has held its own from the beginning of the world — how neither sense nor reason has been able to overcome it, while it alone is able to overcome both reason and sense.

Max Müller
For self is the lord of self, self is the refuge of self; therefore curb thyself as the merchant curbs a good horse.

Max Müller
The wise who control their body, who control their tongue, the wise who control their mind, are indeed well controlled.

Max Müller
Of these years nought remains in memory but the sad feeling that we have advanced and only grown older.

Max Müller
Would an astronomer be an astronomer who did not know the Ptolemaic system of astronomy and had not worked his way through its errors to the truer views of Copernicus?

Max Müller
That deed is not well done of which a man must repent, and the reward of which he receives crying and with a tearful face.

Max Müller
What is emitted from the divine, though it be only like the reflection from the fire, still has the divine reality in itself, and one might almost ask what were the fire without glow, the sun without light, or the Creator without the creature?

Max Müller
The scent of flowers does not travel against the wind; but the odor of good people travels; even against the wind: a good man pervades every place.

Max Müller
There is but one way to understand the continuous growth of the human mind and to gain a firm grasp of what it has achieved in any department of knowledge - that is to watch its historical development.

Max Müller
A man is not learned because he talks much; he who is patient, free from hatred and fear, he is called learned.

Max Müller
As a tree, even though it has been cut down, is firm so long as its root is safe, and grows again, thus, unless the feeders of thirst are destroyed, the pain (of life) will return again and again.

Max Müller
There are certain things which we must know as if they were part of ourselves. But there are many other things which we simply put into our pockets, which we can find there whenever we want them...

Max Müller
Even a good man sees evil days, as long as his good deed has not ripened; but when his good deed has ripened, then does the good man see happy days.

Max Müller
He who wishes to put on the yellow dress without having cleansed himself from sin, who disregards temperance and truth, is unworthy of the yellow dress.

Max Müller
The only knowledge worth having and which lasts us for life must not be cut and dry, but on the contrary must be living and growing knowledge, knowledge of which we know the beginning, the middle, and the end, knowledge of which we can produce the title-deeds whenever they are called for.

Max Müller
Whoever knows it also knows that in love there is no More and no Less; but that he who loves can only love with the whole heart, and with the whole soul; with all his strength and with all his will.

Max Müller
How can a missionary in such circumstances meet the surprise and questions of his pupils, unless he may point to that seed, and tell them what Christianity was meant to be; unless he may show that. like all other religions, Christianity, too, has had its history; that the Christianity of the nineteenth century is not the Christianity of the Middle Ages, that the Christianity of the MiddIe Ages was not that of the early Councils, that the Christianity of the early Councils was not that of the Apostles, and "that what has been said by Christ, that alone was weII said?"

Max Müller
The man who is free from credulity, but knows the uncreated, who has cut all ties, removed all temptations, renounced all desires, he is the greatest of men.

Max Müller