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“ His unceasing and in tense grief fused his heart and welded Sakuntala with it. Never before had the king met with such an experience. Never before had he had the occasion and means of loving truly. Kings are unlucky in this respect; their desires are so easily satisfied that they never get what is to be gained by devotion alone. Fate now plunged Dushyanta into deep grief and thus made him worthy of true love,—made him renounce the role of a rake.
Thus has Kalidas burnt away vice in the internal fire of the sinner's heart; he has not tried to conceal it from the outside. ”

“ From this Eden of bliss Sakuntala, the mere sweetheart of Dushyanta, is exiled in disgrace. But far different was the aspect of the other hermitage where Sakun­tala,—the mother of Bharat and the incarnation of goodness,—took refuge. There no hermit girls water the trees, nor bedew the creepers with their loving sister-like looks, nor feed the young fawn with handfuls of paddy. ”

“ Sakuntala had not known Cupid before; hence her heart was bare of armour, and she could not distrust either the sentiment of love or the character of her lover. The daughter of the hermitage was off her guard, just as the deer there knew not fear.
Dushyanta's conquest of Sakuntala has been very naturally drawn. With equal ease has the poet shown the deeper purity of her character in spite of her fall,—her unimpaired innate chastity. This is another proof of her simplicity.
The flower of the forest needs no servant to brush the dust off her petals. She stands bare; dust settles on her ”

“ The poet has shown how the union of Dushyanta and Sakuntala in the First Act as mere lovers is futile, while their union in the last Act as the parents of Bharat is a true union. The First Act is full of brilliancy and movement. We there have a hermit's daughter in the exuberance of youth, her two companions running over with playfulness, the newly flowering forest creeper, the bee intoxicated with perfume, the fascinated king peeping from behind the trees. ”

“ The poet has shown here, as in Kumarasambhava, that the Beauty that goes hand in hand with Moral Law is eternal, that the calm, controlled and beneficent form of Love is its best form, that Beauty is truly charming under restraint and decays quickly when it gets wild and unfettered. ”

“ In truth there are two unions in Sakuntala; and the motif of the play is the progress from the earlier union of the First Act, with its earthly unstable beauty and romance, to the higher union in the heavenly hermitage of eternal bliss described in the last Act. This drama was meant not for dealing with a particular passion, not for developing a particular character, but for translating the whole subject from one world to another,—to elevate love from the sphere of physical beauty to the eternal heaven of moral beauty. ”

“ One sudden gust of youthful impulse had in a moment given her up to Dushyanta, but that was not the true, the full winning of her. The best means of winning is by devotion, by tapasya. What is easily gained is as easily lost..... Therefore, the poet has made the two lovers undergo a long and austere tapasya that they may gain each other truly eternally. If Dushyanta had accepted Sakuntala when she was first brought to his court, she would have only added to the number of Hansapadikas, occupied a corner of the royal harem, and passed the rest of her life in neglect, gloom and uselessness! ”

“ The two peculiar principles of India are the beneficent tie of home life on the one hand, and the liberty of the soul abstracted from the world on the other. In the world India is variously connected with many races and many creeds ”

“ India sits alone. Kalidas has shown, both in Sakuntala and Kumarasambhava, that there is a harmony between these two principles, an easy transition from the one to the other. In his hermitage human boys play with lion cubs, and the hermit-spirit is reconciled with the spirit of the householder. ”