Quotes from Chanakya

Treat your kid like a darling for the first five years. For the next five years, scold them. By the time they turn sixteen, treat them like a friend. Your grown up children are your best friends.

Test an employee while in the discharge of his duty, a relative in difficulty, a friend in adversity, and a wife in misfortune.

The biggest guru-mantra is: never share your secrets with anybody. It will destroy you.

Education is the best friend. An educated person is respected everywhere. Education beats the beauty and the youth.

The fragrance of flowers spreads only in the direction of the wind. But the goodness of a person spreads in all direction.

Books are as useful to a stupid person as a mirror is useful to a blind person.

Education beats the beauty and the youth.

As a whole forest becomes fragrant by the existence of a single tree with sweet-smelling blossoms in it, so a family becomes famous by the birth of a virtuous son.

He who is overly attached to his family members experiences fear and sorrow, for the root of all grief is attachment. Thus one should discard attachment to be happy.

A thing may be dreaded as long as it has not overtaken you.

Rain which falls upon the sea is useless; so is food for one who is satiated; in vain is a gift for one who is wealthy; and a burning lamp during the daytime is useless.

The beauty of a cuckoo is in its notes, that of a woman in her unalloyed devotion to her husband, that of an ugly person in his scholarship, and that of an ascetic in his forgiveness.

There is some self-interest behind every friendship. There is no friendship without self-interests. This is a bitter truth.

We should not fret for what is past, nor should we be anxious about the future; men of discernment deal only with the present moment.

The world's biggest power is the youth and beauty of a woman.

Do not put your trust in rivers, men who carry weapons, beasts with claws or horns, women, and members of a royal family.

We should always deal cautiously with fire, water, women, foolish people, serpents, and members of a royal family; for they may, when the occasion presents itself, at once bring about our death.

Among men the barber is cunning; among birds the crow; among beasts the jackal; and among women, the malin (flower girl).

What is it that escapes the observation of poets? What is that act women are incapable of doing? What will drunken people not prate? What will not a crow eat?

The learned are envied by the foolish; rich men by the poor; chaste women by adulteresses; and beautiful ladies by ugly ones.

Women have hunger two-fold, shyness four-fold, daring six-fold, and lust eight-fold as compared to men.