Letters

I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors.

I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.

Some recent work by E. Fermi and L. Szilard, which has been communicated to me in manuscript, leads me to expect that the element uranium may be turned into a new and important source of energy in the immediate future.

My lord, out of the love I bear to some of your friends, I have a care of your preservation, therefore I would advise you as you tender your life to devise some excuse to shift of your attendance at this parliament.

Medicine is my lawful wife and literature is my mistress. When I get tired of one I spend the night with the other. Though it's disorderly, it's not so dull, and besides neither of them loses anything from my infidelity.

You and I were long friends; you are now my enemy, and I am yours. But let me tell you that I consider your present political conduct as the only error of a sensible man, and I still regard you with the same friendly feelings I ever had.

A few days ago I witnessed an astonishing sight - men floating through the air in a silk bag filled with inflammable air. What use may this discovery be put to? Perhaps making lift of human bodies, so as to facilitate the carriage of burdens?

What signifies Philosophy that does not apply to some Use? But if you had never studied the Nature of Air... we should never have enjoyed the immense Advantage of breathing dephlogisticated Air, as a Remedy for putrid Diseases.

I rise almost every morning and sit in my chamber without any clothes whatever, half an hour or an hour, according to the season, either reading or writing.

I am anxiously waiting for the day when I will embrace the gallows. It will demonstrate to the world how bravely the revolutionaries can sacrifice themselves for the cause.

I am astounded to learn that you have filed a petition to defend me in the Lahore Conspiracy Case. This is something I never expected from you.

Do not come to Lahore until you receive another letter from me. Battu has been transferred to another jail and his separation has become unbearable for me.

Please do me a favour. There is a terrible famine of books at Borstal Jail. They have made me in charge of the library there.

Justice demands that every under trial should be given all those facilities which help him to prepare and contest the case.

I am full of ambition and hope and of full charm of life. But I can renounce all at the time of need, and that is the real sacrifice.

In the case of every liquid so far examined, the scattered light contains modified radiations which are not present in the incident beam.

I am aware that the conclusion at which I have arrived will be denounced by many as highly irreligious, but he who denounces it is bound to show why it is more irreligious to explain the origin of man as a distinct species by descent from other forms.

I know that you will be prepared to listen with that candor which I have ever found in you. I am quite conscious that my work will be assailed from all quarters, but I believe the truth will eventually prevail.

I never saw a more striking coincidence; if Wallace had my manuscript sketch written out in 1842, he could not have made a better short abstract!

I am almost convinced that species are not (it is like confessing a murder) immutable.

The political economy of British rule in India is a most deplorable and destructive process of bleeding the country to death.

There is so much similarity between the position of the Untouchables in India and of the position of the Negroes in America that the study of the latter is not only natural but necessary.

Are you too deeply occupied to say if my Verse is alive? The Mind is so near itself – it cannot see, distinctly – and I have none to ask.

The Heart wants what it wants - or else it does not care - You wonder why I write - so - Because I cannot help - I like to have you know some care

I have taken all knowledge to be my province; and if I could purge it of two sorts of rovers... I hope I should bring in industrious observations, grounded conclusions, and profitable inventions and discoveries

I have taken all knowledge to be my province; and if I could purge it of two sorts of rovers — whereof the one with frivolous disputations, confutations, and verbosities; the other with blind experiments, and auricular traditions and impostures — hath committed so many spoils, I hope I should bring in industrious observations, grounded conclusions, and profitable inventions and discoveries.

I intend to make use of you as a weapon with which to assail the system of slavery—as a means of concentrating the facts of that institution.

I can hardly believe that I, who was but yesterday a slave on a Maryland plantation, should today be seated in New England writing these words as a free man.

My dear friend Overbeck, I have just now had all anti-Semites shot. Dionysos.

The decision as to what subject I shall specialize in will not come of its own accord. I must, therefore, consider the question and make my choice, and it is precisely this choice which causes me so many difficulties.

I was at the last instant and now I live again! Life is everywhere life, life in ourselves, not in what is outside us. There will be people near me, and to be a man among people and remain a man for ever, not to be downhearted nor to fall in whatever misfortunes may befall me—this is life; this is the task of life.

I consider this insurrection as the first formidable fruit of the Democratic Societies; brought forth I believe too prematurely for their own views, which may contribute to the annihilation of them.

I was perfectly delighted to receive your letter and to be able to read it myself. It seemed almost as if you clasped my hand in yours and spoke to me in the old, dear way.

I have got my own darling child from London. I must confess that I think her as handsome as ever. The work is rather too light & bright & sparkling; it wants shade.

I would not let Martha read 'First Impressions' again upon any account, and am very glad that I did not leave it in your power.

There were twenty dances, & I danced them all, & without any fatigue. It was the same room in which we danced 15 years ago! I thought it all over, & in spite of the shame of being so much older, felt with thankfulness that I was quite as happy now as then.

I mean to confine myself in future to Mr. Tom Lefroy, for whom I don't care sixpence.

A new year has commenced, and brings with it a hope that it may be more auspicious to our beloved country than the preceding one has been.

I never knew before, what such a love as you have made me feel, was. I cannot conceive any beginning of such love as I have for you but beauty.

I want a brighter word than bright, a fairer word than fair. I almost wish we were butterflies and liv'd but three summer days—three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain.

I want a brighter word than bright, a fairer word than fair. I almost wish we were butterflies and lived but three summer days—three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain.

I compare human life to a large Mansion of Many Apartments, two of which I can only describe, the doors of the rest being as yet shut upon me.

I spent Friday evening with Wells & went the next morning to see Death on the Pale horse. It is a wonderful picture, when West's age is considered; But there is nothing to be intense upon; no women one feels mad to kiss; no face swelling into reality.

Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.

I sat down to read King Lear once again the thing appeared to demand the prologue of a Sonnet, I wrote it & began to read—(I know you would like to see it)

You have made yourself the trustee for those in every country who seek to mend the evils of our condition by reasoned experiment within the framework of the existing social system.

The choice is between a managed currency and the gold standard. I believe that a managed currency is inevitable and that the sooner we face this fact the better.

My darling, darling angel, what a place you have in my heart! When I am apart from you, I feel like a schoolboy who has lost his way.

Permit me to congratulate you most heartily on your appointment to the high office you now hold which makes you virtually the Supreme ruler of the teeming millions of India.

Love... represents the highest and indeed the only law of life, as everyone knows and feels in the depths of his heart, but which is so clouded by falsehood that people do not see it.

The longer I live-especially now when I clearly feel the approach of death-the more I feel moved to express what I feel more strongly than anything else, and what in my opinion is of immense importance, namely, what we call the renunciation of all opposition by force, which really simply means the doctrine of the law of love unperverted by sophistries.

I have just received your letter and your book, Indian Home Rule. I read your book with great interest because I think the question you treat in it: the passive resistance — is a question of the greatest importance, not only for India but for the whole humanity.

Just now I have received your very interesting letter, which gives me great pleasure. May God help all your dear brothers and co-workers in the Transvaal.

Love is the only way to rescue humanity from all ills, and in it you too will find the solution of the Indian question.

The happy man is one whose reason recommends to him every act. The wise man's soul ought to be such as would be proper for a god—uplifted, fearless, and greater than his troubles.

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end. The willing, destiny guides them. The unwilling, destiny drags them.

They are slaves, people declare. Nay, rather they are men. Slaves, you say. Nay, comrades. Slaves, you insist. Nay, they are unpretentious friends.

Death either annihilates us or strips us bare. If it strips us bare, then there remains the better part after the separation; if it annihilates us, then nothing remains and our troubles are at an end.

Set aside a certain number of days, during which you shall be content with the scantiest and cheapest fare, with coarse and rough dress, saying to yourself the while: 'Is this the condition that I feared?'

No evil is great which is the last evil of all. Death arrives; it would be a thing to dread, if it could remain with you. But death must either not come at all, or else must come and pass away.

When friendship is settled, you must trust; before friendship is formed, you must pass judgment.

It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it.

Continue to act thus, my dear Lucilius—set yourself free for your own sake; gather and save your time, which till lately has been forced from you, or filched away, or has merely slipped from your hands.

O you men who think or say that I am malevolent, stubborn or misanthropic, how greatly do you wrong me, you do not know the secret causes of my seeming.

Friends have been urging me to write to you for the sake of humanity. But I have resisted their request, because of the feeling that any letter from me would be an impertinence.

Forty-five tons best old dry government bonds, suitable for furnace, gold 7 per cents., 1864, preferred.

I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the eighth-century prophets left their little villages and carried their 'thus saith the Lord' far beyond the boundaries of their hometowns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to practically every hamlet and city of the Greco-Roman world, I too am compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my particular hometown.

In obedience to your orders we have penetrated the Continent of North America to the Pacific Ocean, and sufficiently explored the interior of the country to affirm with confidence that we have discovered the most practicable route which does exist across the continent.

As a humble follower of yours, I send you herewith a booklet which I have written. It is my own translation of a Gujrati writing.

I beg to tender my thanks for your registered letter in connection with the letter addressed to a Hindu, and with the matters that I dealt with in my letter to you.

I take the liberty of inviting your attention to what has been going on in the Transvaal (South Africa) for nearly three years.

I wake filled with thoughts of you. Your portrait and the remembrance of last night's delirium have robbed my senses of repose.

The one thing that gave me comfort was the written word. In Miserere mei, Deus, I found a form of prayer. Behind the yellow bars of my cell I watched the sunrise.

I greet you at the beginning of a great career, which yet must have had a long foreground somewhere, for such a start.

He was an incomparable friend, stern and loyal in admonition and reproof, tender and gracious in sympathy and kinship.

I want to do things only because they are my Father's will.

The indications are very strong that we shall move in a few days, perhaps tomorrow.

My ideal indeed can never be yours. You are you, I am I. You have to be Alasinga, I have to be Vivekananda.

I want you to feel that you have in you the making of a man, and I want you to be eager to develop what is best in you.

The same political parties which now agitate the United States have existed through all time, and this difference of opinion, instead of being a cause of concern, is in the order of nature and may even be useful.

This morning I saw the countryside from my window a long time before sunrise, with nothing but the morning star, which looked very big.

I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day. I have been working on a new painting representing a starry night.

People matter more than things, and the more trouble I take over pictures, the more pictures in themselves leave me cold. I would far rather give up painting than see you killing yourself to make money.

It would not be easy to live without the Faith in Him and the old confidence in Him; without it one would lose one's courage. Those people, never see the sunshine—yet they trust themselves to God.

I long to write to you again, perhaps it will be a rather long time before we see each other. Polish it all the time, and polish it again—work, take pains, that is what one must do.

I have often heard of your name and work and of course have every sympathy with the Untouchables of India. I shall be glad to be of any service I can render if possible in the future.

Master, I am a man who has perfect faith. Master, we have not come through centuries, caste, heroisms, fables, to halt in this land today.