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Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.

 
NUMBER: 1751
AUTHOR: Bhagavad Gita
QUOTATION: Never the spirit was born; the spirit shall cease to be never;
Never was time it was not; End and Beginning are dreams!
Birthless and deathless and changeless remaineth the spirit for ever;
Death hath not touched it at all, dead though the house of it seems!
Who knoweth it exhaustless, self-sustained,
Immortal, indestructible,—shall such
Say, “I have killed a man, or caused to kill?”
Nay, but as when one layeth
His worn-out robes away,
And, taking new ones, sayeth,
“These will I wear to-day!”
So putteth by the spirit
Lightly its garb of flesh,
And passeth to inherit
A residence afresh.
ATTRIBUTION: BHAGAVAD GITA.The Song Celestial or Bhagavad-Gita, trans. Sir Edwin Arnold, pp. 10–11 (1934). This is chapter 2, sections 20–22 in other editions.
SUBJECTS: Spirit