Ramakrishna
Bondage and Liberation are of the mind alone.Collection: Mind
The world is impermanent. One should constantly remember death.Collection: World
Great men have the nature of a child.Collection: Children
Live like a mud-fish: its skin is bright and shiny even though it lives in mud.Collection: Advice
Brahman is beyond mind and speech, beyond concentration and meditation, beyond the knower, the known and knowledge, beyond even the conception of the real and unreal. In short, It is beyond all relativity.Collection: Real
As for me, I consider myself as a speck of the dust of the devotee's feet.Collection: Feet
With sincerity and earnestness one can realize God through all religions. The Vaishnavas will realize God, and so will the Saktas, the Vedantists, and the Brahmos. The Mussalmans and Christians will realize Him too. All will certainly realize God if they are earnest and sincere.Collection: Christian
He who is called Krishna is also Siva and the Primal Sakti...He again, who is called Jesus and Allah. Truth is one.Collection: Jesus
How long do small girls play with their dolls? As long as they are not married and do not live with their husbands. After marriage they put the dolls away in a box. What further need is there of worshipping the image after the vision of God?Collection: Girl
God has created the world in play, as it were.Collection: Play
The grace of God is a wind which is always blowing.Collection: God
It's enough to have faith in one aspect of God. But never get into your head that your faith alone is true and every other is false.Collection: Faith
I have no disciple. I am the servant of the servant of Rama .Collection: Rama
At a certain stage in the path of devotion, the devotee finds satisfaction in God with form, and at another stage, in God without it.Collection: Satisfaction
Dislodging a green nut from it's shell is almost impossible, but let it dry and the lightest tap will do it.Collection: Nuts
Honour both spirit and form, the sentiment within as well as the symbol without.Collection: Spirit
Those who wish to attain God and progress in religious devotion, should particularly guard themselves against the snares of lust and wealth. Otherwise they can never attain perfection.Collection: Religious
As for myself, I look upon all women as my Mother. This is a very pure attitude of mind. There is no risk or danger in it. To look upon a woman as one's sister is also not bad. But the other attitudes are very difficult and dangerous. It is almost impossible to keep to the purity of the ideal.Collection: Inspirational
As the shell, the pith and the kernel of the fruit are all produced form one parent seed of the tree, so from the one Lord is produced the whole of creation, animate and inanimate, spiritual and material.Collection: Spiritual
Respect is heaven, respect is liberation.Collection: Heaven
Right discrimination is of two kinds analytical and synthetical. The first leads one from the phenomena to the Absolute Brahman, while by the second one knows how the Absolute Brahman appears as the universe.Collection: Two
The world is not impermanent if one lives there after knowing God.Collection: Motivational
If a man prays to Thee with a yearning heart, he can reach Thee, through Thy grace, by any path.Collection: Heart
What Brahman is cannot be described. All things in the world — the Vedas, the Puranas, the Tantras, the six systems of philosophy — have been defiled, like food that has been touched by the tongue, for they have been read or uttered by the tongue. Only one thing has not been defiled in this way, and that is Brahman. No one has ever been able to say what Brahman is.Collection: Philosophy
If there are errors in other religions, that is none of our business. God, to whom the world belongs, takes care of that.Collection: Errors
God cannot be realizxd if there is the slightest trace of pride.Collection: Humility
If one has faith, one has everything.Collection: Have Faith
One cannot attain divine knowledge till one gets rid of pride. Water does not stay on the top of a mound; but into low land it flows in torrents from all sides.Collection: Pride
God reveals Himself to a devotee who feels drawn to Him by the combined force of these three attractions: the attraction of worldly possessions for the worldly man, the child's attraction for its mother, and the husband's attraction for the chaste wife. If one feels drawn to Him by the combined force of these three attractions, then through it one can attain Him.Collection: Mother
One cannot completely get rid of the six passions: lust, anger, greed, and the like. Therefore one should direct them to God. If you must have desire and greed, then you should desire love of God and be greedy to attain Him.Collection: Anger
God has revealed to me that only the Paramatman, whom the Vedas describe as the Pure Soul, is as immutable as Mount Sumeru, unattached, and beyond pain and pleasure. There is much confusion in this world of His maya. One can by no means say that 'this' will come after 'that' or 'this' will produce 'that'.Collection: Pain
If you feel proud, let it be in the thought that you are the servant of God, the son of God. Great men have the nature of a child. They are always a child before Him; so they are free from pride. All their strength is of God and not their own. It belongs to Him and comes from Him.Collection: Children
The ordinary man says in his ignorance, "My religion is the sole religion, my religion is the best." But when his heart is illuminated by the true knowledge, he knows that beyond all the battles of sects and of sectaries presides the one, indivisible, eternal and omnipresent Benediction.Collection: Heart
The waves belong to the Ganges, not the Ganges to the waves. A man cannot realize God unless he gets rid of all such egotistic ideas as "I am such an important man" or "I am so and so". Level the mound of "I" to the ground by dissolving it with tears of devotion.Collection: Men
So many religions, so many paths to reach the one and the same goal.Collection: Religious
The vanities of all others may gradually die out, but the vanity of a saint regarding his sainthood is hard indeed to wear away.Collection: Vanity
With sincerity and earnestness one can realize God through all religions.Collection: Realizing
The winds of grace blow all the time. All we need to do is set our sails.Collection: Blow
The goal of life is not the earning of money, but the service of God.p.114Collection: Goal
Whoever wants God intensely, finds Him. Go and verify it in your own life.Collection: Life
Many people think they cannot have knowledge or understanding of God without reading books. But hearing is better than reading, and seeing is better than hearing. Hearing about Benares is different from reading about it; but seeing Benares is different from either hearing or reading.Collection: Book
As the snake is separate from its slough, even so is the Spirit separate from the body.Collection: Snakes
The rishis of old attained the Knowledge of Brahman. One cannot have this so long as there is the slightest trace of worldliness. How hard the rishis laboured ! Early in the morning they would go away from the hermitage, and would spend the whole day in solitude, meditating on Brahman. At night they would return to the hermitage and eat a little fruit or roots. They kept their mind aloof from the objects of sight, hearing, touch, and other things of a worldly nature. Only thus did they realize Brahman as their own inner conciousness.Collection: Morning
A man develops a subtle power as a result of the strict observance of celibacy for twelve years. Then he can understand and grasp very subtle things which otherwise elude his intellect. Through that understanding the aspirant can have direct vision of God. That pure understanding alone enables him to realize Truth.Collection: Inspirational
As a toy fruit or a toy elephant reminds one of the real fruit and the living animal, so do the images that are worshipped remind one of the God who is formless and eternal.Collection: Real
Travel in all the four quarters of the earth, you will find nothing (no true religion) anywhere. Whatever there is, is only here (i .e . in one 's own heart.)Collection: Travel
We laugh at the efforts of the musk deer to find the source of the scent which comes from itself and despair at our efforts to find the peace which is our essence.Collection: Essence
If you keep your heart immersed always in the depth of that holy love, your heart is sure to remain ever full to overflowing with the Divine fervour of sacred love.Collection: Love
Meditate upon the Knowledge and Bliss Eternal , and you will also have bliss. The Bliss indeed is eternal, only it is covered and obscured by ignorance. The less your attachment is towards the senses, the more will be your love towards God .Collection: Ignorance