India: What Can It Teach US?: A Course of Lectures Delivered Before the University of Cambridge

“If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most fully developed some of its choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered over the greatest problems of life, and has found solutions of some of them which well deserve the attention even of those who have studied and , I should point to India. And if I were to ask myself from what literature we who have been nurtured almost exclusively on the thoughts of Greeks and Romans, and of the Semitic race, the Jewish, may draw the corrective which is most wanted in order to make our inner life more perfect, more comprehensive, more universal, in fact more truly human a life... again I should point to India.””

— F. Max Müller

“...universities were not meant entirely, or even chiefly, as stepping-stones to an examination, but that there is something else which universities can teach and ought to teach”

— F. Max Müller

“If I were to look over the whole world to find out the country most richly endowed with all the wealth, power, and beauty that nature can bestow”

— F. Max Müller

“The true history of the world must always be the history of the few; and as we measure the Himalaya by the height of Mount Everest, we must take the true measure of India from the poets of the Veda, the sages of the Upanishads, the founders of the Vedanta and Sankhya philosophies, and the authors of the oldest law-books, and not from the millions who are born and die in their villages, and who have never for one moment been roused out of their drowsy dream of life.””

— F. Max Müller

“Truthfulness is a luxury, perhaps the greatest, and let me assure you, the most expensive luxury in our life”

— F. 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.””

— F. Max Müller

“the true conquerors often those whom the world calls the vanquished.””

— F. Max Müller

“As all have to sleep together laid low in the earth, why do foolish people wish to injure one another?””

— F. Max Müller

“As a man journeying to another village may enjoy a night's rest in the open air, but, after leaving his resting-place, proceeds again on his journey the next day, thus father, mother, wife, and wealth are all but like a night's rest to us”

— F. Max Müller