Romain Rolland Quotes
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Passion is like genius: a miracle.
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There are some dead who are more alive than the living.
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To understand everything is to hate nothing.
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The greatest book is not the one whose message engraves itself on the brain, as a telegraphic message engraves itself on the ticker-tape, but the one whose vital impact opens up other viewpoints, and from writer to reader spreads the fire that is fed by the various essences, until it becomes a vast conflagration leaping from forest to forest.
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A hero is a man who does what he can.
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Leave your theories. All theories, you see, even those of virtue, are bad, foolish, mischievous.
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Discussion is impossible with someone who claims not to seek the truth, but already to possess it.
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Religious faith in the case of the Hindus has never been allowed to run counter to scientific laws, moreover the former is never made a condition for the knowledge they teach, but there are always scrupulously careful to take into consideration the possibility that by reason both the agnostic and atheist may attain truth in their own way. Such tolerance may be surprising to religious believers in the West, but it is an integral part of Vedantic belief.
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No one ever reads a book. He reads himself through books.
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Take possession of the air, submit the elements, penetrate the last redoubts of nature, make space retreat, make death retreat.
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There is only one heroism in the world: to see the world as it is, and to love it.
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One day History will pass judgment on each of the nations at war; she will weigh their measure of errors, lies, and heinous follies. Let us try to make ours light before her!
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Thousands of animals (now billions) are butchered every day without a shadow of remorse. It cries vengeance upon all the human race.
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Let us return to our eagle's nest in the Himalayas. It is waiting for us, for it is ours, eaglets of Europe, we need not renounce any part of our real nature...whence we formerly took our flight.
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You are a vain fellow. You want to be a hero. That is why you do such silly things. A hero!... I don't quite know what that is: but, you see, I imagine that a hero is a man who does what he can. The others do not do it.
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You desire a popular art? Begin by having a "people" whose minds are liberated, a people not crushed by misery and ceaseless toil, not brutalized by every superstition and every fanaticism, a people of itself, and victor in the fight that is being waged today.
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Each man must learn his own ideal and try to accomplish it: that is a surer way of progress than to take the ideas of another.
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Everyone, deep down within, carries a small cemetery of those he has loved.
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I know at last what distinguishes man from animals; financial worries.
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The greatest human ideal is the great cause of bringing together the thoughts of Europe and Asia; the great soul of India will topple our world.
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As a result of all his education, from everything he hears and sees around him, the child absorbs such a lot of lies and foolish nonsense, mixed in with essential truths, that the first duty of the adolescent who wants to be a healthy man is to disgorge it all.
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The artist is the compass which, through the raging of the storm, points steadily to the north.
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The more a man lives, the more a man creates, the more a man loves and loses those whom he loves, the more does he escape from death. With every new blow that we have to bear, with every new work that we round and finish, we escape from ourselves, we escape into the work we have created, the soul we have loved, the soul that has left us.
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All these young millionaires were anarchists, of course: when a man possesses everything it is the supreme luxury for him to deny society: for in that way he can evade his responsibilities
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The true Vedantic spirit does not start out with a system of preconceived ideas. It possesses absolute liberty and unrivalled courage among religions with regard to the facts to be observed and the diverse hypotheses it has laid down for their coordination. Never having been hampered by a priestly order, each man has been entirely free to search wherever he pleased for the spiritual explanation of the spectacle of the universe.
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Skepticism, riddling the faith of yesterday, prepared the way for the faith of tomorrow.
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The theatre, like the fresco, is art fitted to its place. And therefore it is above all else the human art, the living art.
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Let us seek truth everywhere; let us cull it wherever we can find its blossom or its SEED. Having Found the seed, let us scatter it to the winds of heaven. Where ever it may blow, it will germinate. There is no lack in this wide universe of souls that will form the new ground.
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There is only one necessary condition for the emergence of a new theatre, that the stage and auditorium should be open to the masses, should be able to contain a people and the actions of a people.
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You want to be a hero. That is why you do such silly things.
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