Top 177 Quotes & Sayings by Ramakrishna
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an Indian leader Ramakrishna.
Last updated on April 14, 2025.
Unalloyed love of God is the essential thing. All else is unreal.
God is in all men, but all men are not in God; that is why we suffer.
When the divine vision is attained, all appear equal; and there remains no distinction of good and bad, or of high and low.
If you want to go east, don't go west.
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.
Through love one acquires renunciation and discrimination naturally.
Longing is like the rosy dawn. After the dawn out comes the sun. Longing is followed by the vision of God.
The world is indeed a mixture of truth and make-believe. Discard the make-believe and take the truth.
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.
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.
Travel in all the four quarters of the earth, yet you will find nothing anywhere. Whatever there is, is only here.
Unless one always speaks the truth, one cannot find God Who is the soul of truth.
Disease is the tax which the soul pays for the body, as the tenant pays house-rent for the use of the house.
Many are the names of God and infinite the forms through which He may be approached.
To work without attachment is to work without the expectation of reward or fear of any punishment in this world or the next. Work so done is a means to the end, and God is the end.
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.
Work, apart from devotion or love of God, is helpless and cannot stand alone.
The fabled musk deer searches the world over for the source of the scent which comes from itself.
When one has love for God, one doesn't feel any physical attraction to wife, children, relatives and friends. One retains only compassion for them.
Many good sayings are to be found in holy books, but merely reading them will not make one religious.
God is everywhere but He is most manifest in man. So serve man as God. That is as good as worshipping God.
If you must be mad, be it not for the things of the world. Be mad with the love of God.
Through selfless work, love of God grows in the heart. Then through his grace one realize him in course of time. God can be seen. One can talk to him as I am talking to you.
Pray to God that your attachment to such transitory things as wealth, name, and creature comforts may become less and less every day.
It is easy to talk on religion, but difficult to practice it.
When the flower blooms, the bees come uninvited.
The physicians of one class feel the patients and go away, merely prescribing medicine. As they leave the room they simply ask the patient to take the medicine. They are the poorest class of physicians.
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.
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.
One must be very particular about telling the truth. Through truth one can realize God.
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.
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.
The truth is that you cannot attain God if you have even a trace of desire. Subtle is the way of dharma. If you are trying to thread a needle, you will not succeed if the thread has even a slight fiber sticking out.
By the mind one is bound; by the mind one is freed. ... He who asserts with strong conviction: "I am not bound, I am free," becomes free.
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.
If diving once does not bring you pearls, you need not therefore conclude that the sea is without them.
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.
Only two kinds of people can attain self-knowledge: those who are not encumbered at all with learning, that is to say, whose minds are not over-crowded with thoughts borrowed from others; and those who, after studying all the scriptures and sciences, have come to realise that they know nothing.
You should not feel that your path is the only right path and that other paths are wrong. You mustn't bear malice toward others.
The ego is like the root of a banyan tree, you think you have removed it all then one fine morning you see a sprout flourishing again.
The winds of grace are always blowing, but you have to raise the sail.
There are three kinds of love;
unselfish, mutual, and selfish.
The unselfish love is of the highest kind;
The lover only minds the welfare of the beloved and does not care for his own sufferings.
In mutual love the lover not only wants the happiness of his beloved;
but has an eye towards his own happiness also. It is middling.
The selfish love is the lowest. It only looks towards its own happiness,
no matter whether the beloved suffers weal or woe.
All religions are true. God can be reached by different religions. Many rivers flow by many ways but they fall into the sea. They all are one.
The supreme purpose and goal for human life... is to cultivate love.
Once a person has faith, he has achieved everything.
Bondage and Liberation are of the mind alone.
An ocean of bliss may rain down from the heavens, but if you hold up only a thimble, that is all you receive
I have now come to a stage of realization in which I see that God is walking in every human form and manifesting Himself alike through the sage and the sinner, the virtuous and the vicious. Therefore when I meet different people I say to myself, “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.
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.
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.
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.
The sun can give heat and light to the whole world, but he cannot do so when the clouds shut out his rays. Similarly as long as egotism veils the heart, God cannot shine upon it.
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.
Little children play with dolls in the outer room just as they like, without any care of fear or restraint; but as soon as their mother comes in, they throw aside their dolls and run to her crying, "Mamma, mamma." You too, are now playing in this material world, infatuated with the dolls of wealth, honour, fame, etc., If however, you once see your Divine Mother, you will not afterwards find pleasure in all these. Throwing them all aside, you will run to her.
What is the use of merely listening to lectures? The real thing is practice.
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.
As long as I live, so long do I learn.
All troubles come to an end when the ego dies
God laughs on two occasions. He laughs when the physician says to the patient's mother, 'Don't be afraid, mother; I shall certainly cure your boy.' God laughs, saying to Himself, 'I am going to take his life, and this man says he will save it!' The physician thinks he is the master, forgetting that God is the Master. God laughs again when two brothers divide their land with a string, saying to each other, 'This side is mine and that side is yours.' He laughs and says to Himself, 'The whole universe belongs to Me, but they say they own this portion or that portion.'
Forgiveness is the true nature of the ascetic.
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