Chanakya Niti

  • A wicked wife, a false friend, a saucy servant and living in a house with serpent in it are nothing but death.
  • Do not inhabit a country where you are not respected, cannot earn your livelihood, have no friends or cannot acquire knowledge.
  • Do not stay for a single day where there are not these five persons: A wealthy man, a brahmin well versed in vedic lore, a king, a river and a physician.
  • Test a servant while in the discharge of his duty, a relative in difficulty, a friend in adversity, and wife in misfortune.
  • Do not put your trust in rivers, men who carry weapons, beasts with claws or horns, women, and member of a royal family.
  • Separation from the wife, disgrace from one's own people, an enemy saved in battle, service to wicked king, poverty, and a mismanaged assembly: these six kinds of evils, if afflicting a person, burn him even without fire.
  • Tress on a riverbank, a woman in another man's house, and kings without counselors go without doubt to swift destruction.
  • Friendship between equals flourished, service under a king is respectable, it is good to be business-minded in public dealing, and a beautiful lady is safe in her home.
  • Of a rascal and a serpent, the serpent is the better of the two, for he strikes only at the time he is destined to kill, while the former at every step.
  • Give up a member to save a family, a family to save a village, a village to save a country, and the country to save yourself.
  • A good wife is one who serves her husband in the morning like a mother does, loves him in the day like a sister does and pleases him like a prostitute in the night.
  • As long as your body is healthy and under control and death is distant, try to save your soul, when death is immanent what can you do?
  • As a single withered tree, if set flame, causes a whole forest to burn, so does a rascal son destroy a whole family.
  • Do not reveal what you have thought upon doing, but by wise council keep it secret being determined to carry it into execution.
  • The life of an uneducated man is as useless as the tail of a dog which neither covers its rear and, nor protect it from the bites of insects.
  • The fragrance of flowers only in the direction of the wind. But the goodness of a person spreads in all direction.
  • The earth is supported by the power of truth; it is the power of truth that makes the sun shine and winds blow; indeed all things rest upon truth.
  • He who lives in our mind is near though he may actually be far away; but he who is not in our heart is far though he may really be nearby