Kalidasa Quotes (400-500)

“Be it known to thee, o King that... I am the servant of the eight-formed Siva and my back is sanctified by the favour of placing his footsteps, when wishing to mount his bull white as the mount Kailasa.”

“Ayodhyā, which was having guests and four gates in all the four directions, was shining like the body of four-faced Brahmā, expert in instant creation... Women of Sāketa saluted him with folded hands... He stayed in the sprawling garden of Sāketa... He entered into Ayodhyā full of women who had come to see Sītā... By the order of the king Kuśa guilds of artisans, with their advanced instruments, renovated Ayodhyā, as if clouds, by the order of Indra, made the hot earth green by rain-fall. Ayodhyā looked as beautiful as it was earlier. There the son of Maithilī, i.e. Kuśa attained such happiness that he had no desire left for becoming the master of the paradise and the Alakapuri.”

“Amazed at the whole spectacle, the king, in the words of Kalidasa in his play thus speaks: In a dusty apparel, grey appearing With a face penance, impaired; with hair unknotted; So unkind as I was, yet chaste her bearing From myself, parted so long, remains devoted.”

“Kalidasa, the immortal poet and playwright, is a peerless genius whose works have won world-wide fame. The matchless qualities of his work have been lavishly praised both by the ancient Indian critics and modern scholars. (...) In modern times the translations of Kalidasa's works in numerous Indian and foreign languages have spread his fame all over the world and now he ranks among the few topmost poets and playwrights of the world.”

“Where find a soul that does not thrill    In Kalidasa’s verse to meet The smooth, inevitable lines    Like blossom-clusters, honey-sweet?”

“Kalidasa, the immortal poet and playwright, is a peerless genius whose works have won world-wide fame. The matchless qualities of his work have been lavishly praised both by the ancient Indian critics and modern scholars. ... In modern times the translations of Kalidasa's works in numerous Indian and foreign languages have spread his fame all over the world and now he ranks among the few topmost poets and playwrights of the world.”

“The first time I came upon this inexhaustible work, it aroused such enthusiasm in me and so held me that I could not stop studying it. I even felt impelled to make the impossible attempt to bring it in some form to the German stage. These efforts were fruitless but they made me so thoroughly acquainted with this most valuable work, it represented such an epoch in my life, I so absorbed it, that for thirty years I did not look at either the English or the German version. It is only now that I understand the enormous impression that work made on me at an earlier age.”

“In the whole world of Greek antiquity there is no poetical representation of beautiful love which approaches even afar.”

“I cannot easily find a product of human mind more pleasant than this [Shakuntala] ... a real blossom of the Orient, and the first, most beautiful of its kind! Something like that, of course, appears once every two thousand years.”

“I advance an opinion that we have few specimens either in classical or modern poetry of more genuine tenderness or delicate feeling.”