Top 94 Quotes by Annie Besant

Theosophy tries to bridge the gulf between Buddhism and Christianity by pointing to the fundamental spiritual truths on which both religions are built, and by winning people to regard the Buddha and the Christ as fellow-laborers, and not as rivals.

Debating clubs among boys are very useful, not only as affording pleasant meetings and interesting discussions, but also as serving for training grounds for developing the knowledge and the qualities that are needed in public life.

In a deep metaphysical sense, all that is conditioned is illusory. All phenomena are literally 'appearances,' the outer masks in which the One Reality shows itself forth in our changing universe. The more 'material' and solid the appearance, the further is it from reality, and therefore the more illusory it is.

The human body is constantly undergoing a process of decay and of reconstruction. First builded into the astral form in the womb of the mother, it is built up continually by the insetting of fresh materials. With every moment tiny molecules are passing away from it; with every moment tiny molecules are streaming into it.

The Roman Catholic Church, had it captured me, as it nearly did, would have sent me on some mission of danger and sacrifice and utilised me as a martyr; the Church established by law transformed me into an unbeliever and an antagonist.

Clairvoyants can see flashes of colour, constantly changing, in the aura that surrounds every person: each thought, each feeling, thus translating itself in the astral world, visible to the astral sight.

One of the great advantages of cremation - apart from all sanitary conditions - lies in the swift restoration to Mother Nature of the material elements composing the physical and astral corpses, brought about by the burning.

This Old Testament - containing error, folly, absurdity and immorality - is by English statute law declared to be of divine authority, a blasphemy - if there were anyone to be blasphemed - blacker and more insolent than any word ever written or penned by the most hotheaded Freethinker.