A vow is a purely religious act which cannot be taken in a fit of passion. It can be taken only with a mind purified and composed and with God as witness.

Personally, I hold that a man, who deliberately and intelligently takes a pledge and then breaks it, forfeits his manhood.

I claim that human mind or human society is not divided into watertight compartments called social, political and religious. All act and react upon one another.

Providence has its appointed hour for everything. We cannot command results, we can only strive.

When every hope is gone, 'when helpers fail and comforts flee,' I find that help arrives somehow, from I know not where. Supplication, worship, prayer are no superstition; they are acts more real than the acts of eating, drinking, sitting or walking. It is no exaggeration to say that they alone are real, all else is unreal.

I took the vow of celibacy in 1906. I had not shared my thoughts with my wife until then, but only consulted her at the time of making the vow. She had no objection.