Ramakrishna

Longing is like the rosy dawn. After the dawn out comes the sun. Longing is followed by the vision of God.

If you first fortify yourself with the true knowledge of the Universal Self, and then live in the midst of wealth and worldliness, surely they will in no way affect you.

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.)

Pray to God that your attachment to such transitory things as wealth, name, and creature comforts may become less and less every day.

God can be realized through all paths. All religions are true. The important thing is to reach the roof. You can reach it by stone stairs or by wooden stairs or by bamboo steps or by a rope. You can also climb up by a bamboo pole.

God is everywhere but He is most manifest in man. So serve man as God. That is as good as worshipping God.

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.

God in the form of the saint, God in the form of the sinner, God in the form of the righteous, God in the form of the unrighteous.

Unalloyed love of God is the essential thing. All else is unreal.

Try to cultivate love of God. You are born as a human being only to attain divine love.

The fabled musk deer searches the world over for the source of the scent which comes from itself.

The breeze of grace is always blowing; set your sail to catch that breeze.

Dwell, O mind, within yourself; Enter no other's home. If you but seek there, you will find All you are searching for. God, the true Philosopher's Stone, Who answers every prayer, Lies hidden deep within your heart, The richest gem of all. How many pearls and precious stones Are scattered all about The outer court that lies before The chamber of your heart!

Different creeds are but different paths to reach the same God.

One man may read the Bhagavata by the light of a lamp, and another may commit a forgery by that very light; but the lamp is unaffected. The sun sheds its light on the wicked as well as on the virtuous.

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'.

Bondage and Liberation are of the mind alone.

The Man who works for others, without any selfish motive, really does good to himself.