God leads man while is misleading himself, the higher nature watches over the stumbling of his lower mortality; this is the tangle and contradiction out of which we have to escape into the to which alone is possible a clear knowledge and a faultless action.
206. That thou shouldst have pity on creatures, is well, but not well, if thou art a slave to the pity. Be a slave to nothing expect to God, not even to His most luminous angels.
207. Beatitude is God’s aim for humanity; get this supreme good for thyself first that thou mayst distribute it entirely to thy fellow-beings.
208. He who acquires for himself alone, acquires ill though he may call it heaven and virtue.
209. In my ignorance I thought anger could be noble and vengeance grandiose;
210. Power is noble, when it over-tops anger; destruction is grandiose, but it loses caste when it proceeds from vengeance. Leave these things, for they belong to a lower humanity.
211. Poets make much of death and external afflictions; but the only tragedies are the soul’s failures and the only epic man’s triumphant ascent towards godhead.
212. The tragedies of the heart and the body are the weeping of children over their little griefs and their broken toys. Smile within thyself, but comfort the children; join also, if thou canst, is their play.
213. “There is always something abnormal and eccentric about men of genius.” And why not? For genius itself is an abnormal birth and out of man’s ordinary centre.
214. Nature sometimes gets into a fury with her own resistance, then she damages the brain in order to free the inspiration; for in this effort the equilibrium of the average material brain is her chief opponent. Pass over the madness of such and profit by their inspiration.
216. Who can bear Kali rushing into the system in her fierce force and burning godhead? Only the man whom Krishna already possesses.
217. Hate not the oppressor, for, if he is strong, thy bate increase his force of resistance; if he is weak, thy hate was needless.
218. Hatred is a sword of power; but its edge is always double. It is like the Kritya of the ancient magicians which, if balked of its prey, returned in fury to devour its sender.
219. Love God in thy opponent, even while thou strikes to him; so shall neither have hell for his portion.
220. Men talk of enemies, but where are they? I only see wrestlers of one party or the other in the great arena of the universe.
Excerpt from the book Essays Divine and Human by Sri Aurobindo