A man is born alone and dies alone and he experiences the good and bad consequences of his karma alone and he goes alone to hell or the Supreme abode.

Attributed to Chanakya, this saying stresses the radical personal nature of moral responsibility. Birth and death are presented as solitary thresholds, and the doctrine of karma makes one’s fate—pleasant or painful—an individual accounting rather than something transferable to family, friends, or social status. The mention of “hell” and a “Supreme abode” frames the idea in traditional Indian soteriology: one’s actions shape one’s posthumous destination. Read ethically, the quote urges self-discipline and integrity by denying the comfort of vicarious merit or blame; existentially, it underscores human aloneness at life’s most decisive moments.