Top 100 Ramakrishna Quotes
#2. I have no disciple. I am the servant of the servant of Rama .
Ramakrishna
#3. The waves belong to the water. Does the water belong to the waves?
Ramakrishna
#4. Common men talk bagfuls of religion but do not practise even a grain of it. The wise man speaks a little, even though his whole life is religion expressed in action.
Ramakrishna
#5. Imagine a limitless expanse of water: above and below, before and behind, right and left, everywhere there is water. In that water is placed a jar filled with water. There is water inside the jar and water outside, but the jar is still there. The 'I' is the jar.
Ramakrishna
#7. God is in all men, but all men are not in God; that is why we suffer.
Ramakrishna
#8. 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.
Ramakrishna
#9. 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.
Ramakrishna
#10. It is necessary to pray to Him, with a longing Heart.
Ramakrishna
#11. 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.
Ramakrishna
#12. If a householder is a genuine devotee, he performs his duties without attachment; he surrenders the fruit of his work to God - his gain or loss, his pleasure or pain. Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (Abridged)
Ramakrishna
#13. Bondage is of the mind; freedom too is of the mind. If you say 'I am a free soul. I am a son of God who can bind me' free you shall be.
Ramakrishna
#14. Do not be small minded. Do not pray for gourds and pumpkins from God, when you should be asking for pure love and pure knowledge to dawn within every heart.
Ramakrishna
#15. Do not seek illumination unless you seek it as a man whose hair is on fire seeks a pond.
Ramakrishna
#16. The way of love is as true as the way of knowledge. All paths ultimately lead to the same Truth. But as long as God keeps the feeling of ego in us, it is easier to follow the path of love.
Ramakrishna
#17. As a boy holding to a post or a pillar whirls about it with headlong speed without any fear or falling, so perform your worldly duties, fixing your hold firmly upon God, and you will be free from danger.
Ramakrishna
#18. In the scriptures you will find the way to realize God. But after getting all the information about the path, you must begin to work, Only then can you attain your goal.
Ramakrishna
#19. The winds of God's grace are always blowing, it is for us to raise our sails.
Ramakrishna
#20. It is on account of the ego that one is not able to see God. In front of the door of God's mansion lies the stump of ego. One cannot enter the mansion without jumping over the stump.
Ramakrishna
#21. Why should you renounce everything? You are all right as you are, following the middle ...
Ramakrishna
#22. The fool who repeats again and again: "I am bound, I am bound," remains in bondage. He who repeats day and night: "I am a sinner, I am a sinner," becomes a sinner indeed.
Ramakrishna
#23. You see many stars in the sky at night, but not when the sun rises. Can you therefore say that there are no stars in the heavens during the day? Because you cannot find God in the days of your ignorance, say not that there is no God.
Ramakrishna
#24. If you must be mad, be it not for the things of the world. Be mad with the love of God.
Ramakrishna
#25. He who is called Krishna is also Siva and the Primal Sakti ... He again, who is called Jesus and Allah. Truth is one.
Ramakrishna
#26. More are the names of God and infinite are the forms through which He may be approached. In whatever name and form you worship Him, through them you will realise Him.
Ramakrishna
#28. One should not think, 'My religion alone is the right path and other religions are false.' God can be realized by means of all paths. It is enough to have sincere yearning for God. Infinite are the paths and infinite are the opinions.
Ramakrishna
#29. 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.
Ramakrishna
#30. The world is indeed a mixture of truth and make-believe. Discard the make-believe and take the truth.
Ramakrishna
#31. 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.
Ramakrishna
#32. These people are like ... a frog living in a well, who has never seen the outside world. He knows only his well, so he will not believe that there is such a thing as the world. Likewise, people talk so much about the world because they have not known the joy of God.
Ramakrishna
#33. The breeze of grace is always blowing; set your sail to catch that breeze.
Ramakrishna
#34. The world is impermanent. [All things change. Knowing this helps you see the end of any difficulty and thereby have hope.]
Ramakrishna
#35. 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.
Ramakrishna
#36. When divine vision is attained, all appear equal; and there remains no distinction of good and bad, or of high and low.
Ramakrishna
#37. He is born in vain, who having attained the human birth, so difficult to get, does not attempt to realize God in this very life.
Ramakrishna
#38. Knowledge leads to unity, but ignorance to diversity.
Ramakrishna
#39. Try to cultivate love of God. You are born as a human being only to attain divine love.
Ramakrishna
#41. The supreme purpose and goal for human life ... is to cultivate love.
Ramakrishna
#42. 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.
Ramakrishna
#43. Dislodging a green nut from it's shell is almost impossible, but let it dry and the lightest tap will do it.
Ramakrishna
#44. The winds of grace blow all the time. All we need to do is set our sails.
Ramakrishna
#45. The grace of God is a wind which is always blowing.
Ramakrishna
#46. It is very pleasant to scratch an itching ring-worm, but the sensation one gets afterwards is very painful and intolerable. In the same way the pleasures of this world are very attractive in the beginning, but their consequences are terrible to contemplate and hard to endure.
Ramakrishna
#47. You should love everyone because God dwells in all beings.
Ramakrishna
#48. One must be very particular about telling the truth. Through truth one can realize God.
Ramakrishna
#49. Do all your duties, but keep your mind on God. Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna,p.81
Ramakrishna
#50. A man is truly free, even here in this embodied state, if he knows that God is the true agent and he by himself is powerless to do anything.
Ramakrishna
#51. A boat may stay in water, but water should not stay in boat. A spiritual aspirant may live in the world, but the world should not live within him.
Ramakrishna
#52. What is the use of merely listening to lectures? The real thing is practice.
Ramakrishna
#53. Do you know my attitude? Books, scriptures, and things like that only point out the way to reach God. After finding the way, what more need is there of books and scriptures? Then comes the time for action.
Ramakrishna
#54. Spirituality automatically leads to humility. When a flower develops into a fruit, the petals drop off on its own. When one becomes spiritual, the ego vanishes gradually on its own. A tree laden with fruits always bends low. Humility is a sign of greatness.
Ramakrishna
#55. Pray to Him anyway you like, He can even hear the footfall of an ant.
Ramakrishna
#56. If a man prays to Thee with a yearning heart, he can reach Thee, through Thy grace, by any path.
Ramakrishna
#57. 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?
Ramakrishna
#58. Unless one always speaks the truth, one cannot find God Who is the soul of truth.
Ramakrishna
#59. The magnetic needle always points to the north, and hence it is that sailing vessel does not lose her direction. So long as the heart of man is directed towards God, he cannot be lost in the ocean of worldliness.
Ramakrishna
#60. It is true that God is even in the tiger, but we must not go and face the animal. So it is true that God dwells even in the most wicked, but it is not meet that we should associate with the wicked.
Ramakrishna
#61. If diving once does not bring you pearls, you need not therefore conclude that the sea is without them.
Ramakrishna
#62. Bhakti is the one essential thing.
To be sure, God exists in all beings.
Who, then is a devotee? He whose mind dwells on God.
But this is not possible as long as one has egotism and vanity.
The water of God's grace cannot collect
on the high mound of egotism. It runs down.
Ramakrishna
#63. Many good sayings are to be found in holy books, but merely reading them will not make one religious.
Ramakrishna
#64. 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.
Ramakrishna
#65. So long as one does not become simple like a child, one does not get divine illumination. Forget all the worldly knowledge that thou hast acquired and become as a child, and then will thou get the divine wisdom.
Ramakrishna
#66. 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.
Ramakrishna
#68. The tree laden with fruits always bends low. If you wish to be great, be lowly and meek.
Ramakrishna
#69. Forgiveness is the true nature of the ascetic.
Ramakrishna
#70. An ocean of bliss may rain down from the heavens, but if you hold up only a thimble, that is all you receive
Ramakrishna
#71. Longing is like the rosy dawn. After the dawn out comes the sun. Longing is followed by the vision of God.
Ramakrishna
#72. That knowledge which purifies the mind and heart alone is true Knowledge, all else is only a negation of Knowledge.
Ramakrishna
#73. Sugar and sand may be mixed together, but the ant rejects the sand and goes off with the sugar grain; so pious men lift the good from the bad.
Ramakrishna
#74. Work, apart from devotion or love of God, is helpless and cannot stand alone.
Ramakrishna
#75. Men are like pillow-cases. The colour of one may be red, that of another blue, and that of the third black; but all contain the same cotton within. So it is with man; one is beautiful, another is ugly, a third holy , and a fourth wicked; but the Divine Being dwells in them all
Ramakrishna
#76. Bondage and Liberation are of the mind alone.
Ramakrishna
#77. Those whose spiritual awareness has been awakened never make a false move. They don't have to avoid evil. They are so replete with love that whatever they do is a good action. They are fully conscious that they are not the doer of their actions, but only servants of God.
Ramakrishna
#78. If you spent one-tenth of the time you devoted to distractions like chasing women or making money to spiritual practice, you would be enlightened in a few years.
Ramakrishna
#79. 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.
Ramakrishna
#80. Different creeds are but different paths to reach the same God.
Ramakrishna
#81. If you want to go east, don't go west.
Ramakrishna
#82. When the flower blooms
The bees come uninvited.
Ramakrishna
#83. If you meditate on your ideal, you will acquire its nature. If you think of God day and night, you will acquire the nature of God.
Ramakrishna
#84. It is not lust alone that one should be afraid of in the life of the world. There is also anger. Anger arises when obstacles are placed in the way of desire.
Ramakrishna
#85. Wisdom leads to unity, but ignorance to separation.
So long as God seems to be outside and far away, there is ignorance.
But when God is realised within, that is true knowledge.
Ramakrishna
#86. Have love for everyone, no one is other than you.
Ramakrishna
#87. If you desire to be pure, have firm faith, and slowly go on with your devotional practices without wasting your energy in useless scriptural discussions and arguments. Your little brain will otherwise be muddled.
Ramakrishna
#88. 1. Is anything impossible for the grace of God? Suppose you bring a light into a room that has been dark a thousand years; does it remove the darkness little by little? The room is lighted all at once. Intense renunciation is what is needed.
Ramakrishna
#89. 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.
Ramakrishna
#90. Can he rectify false weight whose own scales are uncertain? Can you enlighten your neighbor while you yourself have no light?
Ramakrishna
#91. Make your meditation a continuous state of mind. A great worship is going on all the time, so nothing should be neglected or excluded from your constant meditative awareness.
Ramakrishna
#92. 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.
Ramakrishna
#93. The fabled musk deer searches the world over for the source of the scent which comes from itself.
Ramakrishna
#94. Who may be called a paramahamsa? He who, like a swan, can take the milk from a mixture of milk and water, leaving aside the water. He who, like an ant, can take the sugar from a mixture of sugar and sand, leaving aside the sand.
Ramakrishna
#95. All will surely realize God. All will be liberated. It may be that some get their meal in the morning, some at noon, and some in the evening; but none will go without food. All, without any exception, will certainly know their real Self.
Ramakrishna
#96. The young bamboo can be easily bent, but the full grown bamboo breaks when it is bent with force. It is easy to bend the young heart towards God, but the untrained heart of the old escapes the hold whenever it is so drawn
Ramakrishna
#97. Who is whose Guru? God alone is the guide and Guru of the universe.
Ramakrishna
#98. One day, it was suddenly revealed to me that everything is pure spirit.
Ramakrishna
#99. 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.
Ramakrishna
#100. As for me, I consider myself as a speck of the dust of the devotee's feet.
Ramakrishna
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