Great Throughts Treasury

"Complete peace equally reigns between two mental waves."

"Condemn none: if you can stretch out a helping hand, do so. If you cannot, fold your hands, bless your brothers, and let them go their own way."

"Dare to be free, dare to go as far as your thought leads, and dare to carry that out in your life."

"Crave for a thing, you will get it. Renounce the craving, the object will follow you by itself."

"Desire is poverty. Desire is the greatest impurity of the mind. Desire is the motive force for action. Desire in the mind is the real impurity. Even a spark of desire is a very great evil."

"Delusion will vanish as the light becomes more and more effulgent, load after load of ignorance will vanish, and then will come a time when all else has disappeared and the sun alone shines."

"Desire, want, is the father of all misery. Desires are bound by the laws of success and failure. Desires must bring misery. The great secret of true success, of true happiness, is this: the person who asks for no return, the perfectly unselfish person, is the most successful."

"Desire, ignorance, and inequality-this is the trinity of bondage."

"Desire nothing, give up all desires and be happy."

"Do you think these sannyasi children of Sri Ramakrishna are born to simply to sit under trees lighting dhuni-fires? Whenever any of them will take up some work, people will be astonished to see their energy. Learn from them how to work."

"Discriminate within yourself between the real and the unreal. Have you not read the Vedanta? Even when you sleep, keep the sword of discrimination at the head of your bed, so that covetousness cannot approach you even in dream. Practicing such strength, renunciation will gradually come, and then you will see the portals of heaven are wide open to you."

"Despondency is not religion, whatever else it may be."

"Do any deserve liberty who are not ready to give it to others? Let us calmly go to work, instead of dissipating our energy in unnecessary fretting and fuming."

"Do not go for glass beads leaving the mine of diamonds. This life is a great chance. What, seekest thou the pleasures of the world? He is the fountain of all bliss. See for the highest, aim at that highest, and you shall reach the highest."

"Do not hate anybody, because that hatred which comes out from you must, in the long run, come back to you. If you love, that love will come back to you, completing the circle."

"Do not brood over your past mistakes and failures as this will only fill your mind with grief, regret and depression. Do not repeat them in the future."

"Do not look back upon what has been done. Go ahead!"

"Do not love leisure. Waste not a minute. Be bold. Realize the Truth, here and now!"

"Do one thing at a time, and while doing it put your whole soul into it to the exclusion of all else."

"Education is the manifestation of perfection present already in man."

"Every action that helps us manifest our divine nature more and more is good; every action that retards it is evil."

"Don't look back-forward, infinite energy, infinite enthusiasm, infinite daring, and infinite patience-then alone can great deeds be accomplished."

"Even the greatest fool can accomplish a task if it were after his or her heart. But the intelligent ones are those who can convert every work into one that suits their taste."

"Ever mind failures; they are quite natural, they are the beauty of life, these failures. What would life be without them? It would not be worth having if it were not for struggles. Where would be the poetry of life? Never mind the struggles, the mistakes. I never heard a cow tell a lie, but it is only a cow-never a man."

"Everything must be sacrificed, if necessary, for that one sentiment: universality."

"Every individual is a center for the manifestation of a certain force. This force has been stored up as the resultant of our previous works, and each one of us is born with this force at our back."

"Each soul is potentially divine."

"Each work has to pass through these stages-ridicule, opposition, and then acceptance. Those who think ahead of their time are sure to be misunderstood."

"Every step I take in light is mine forever."

"Experience is the only teacher we have. We may talk and reason all our lives, but we shall not understand a word of truth until we experience it ourselves."

"External nature is only internal nature writ large."

"Fear is death, fear is sin, fear is hell, fear is unrighteousness, fear is wrong life. All the negative thoughts and ideas that are in the world have proceeded from this evil spirit of fear."

"Face the brutes. That is a lesson for all life-face the terrible, face it boldly. Like the monkeys, the hardships of life fall back when we cease to flee before them."

"Feel nothing, know nothing, do nothing, have nothing, give up all to God, and say utterly, 'Thy will be done.' We only dream this bondage. Wake up and let it go."

"Fill the brain with high thoughts, highest ideals, place them day and night before you, and out of that will come great work."

"Freedom can never be reached by the weak. Throw away all weakness. Tell your body that it is strong, tell your mind that it is strong, and have unbounded faith and hope in yourself."

"Forget like a child any injury done by somebody immediately. Never keep it in the heart. It kindles hatred."

"First, believe in the world-that there is meaning behind everything."

"First get rid of the delusion I am the body, then only will we want real knowledge."

"Give me few men and women who are pure and selfless and I shall shake the world."

"From the high spiritual flights of the Vedanta philosophy, of which the latest discoveries of science seem like echoes, to the low ideas of idolatry with its multifarious mythology, the agnosticism of the Buddhists and the atheism of the Jains, each and all have a place in the Hindu's religion."

"Give up all desire for enjoyment in earth or heaven. Control the organs of the senses and control the mind. Bear every misery without even knowing that you are miserable. Think of nothing but spiritual freedom."

"Go on saying, I am free. Never mind if the next moment delusion comes and says, I am bound. Dehypnotize the whole thing."

"Give up salt, give up sugar, give up spices, give up vegetables, give up chutnies, give up tamarind. Serve Bhangis, serve rogues, serve inferiors, remove faecal matter. Do not revenge, resist not evil, return good for evil, bear insult and injury. Forget like a child any injury done by somebody immediately. Never keep it in the heart. It kindles hatred."

"Go beyond science, into the region of metaphysics. Real religion is beyond argument. It can only be lived both inwardly and outwardly."

"God is merciful to those whom He sees struggling heart and soul for realization. But remain idle, without any struggle, and you will see that His grace will never come."

"God is not to be reached by the weak. Never be weak. You have infinite strength within you. How else will you conquer anything? How else will you come to God?"

"God is to be worshipped as the one beloved, dearer than everything in this and next life."

"God is all-full. He is self-contained. He is eternal satisfaction."

"God is self-evident, impersonal, omniscient, the Knower and the Master of nature, the Lord of all. He is behind all worship and it is being done according to Him, whether we know it or not."