Great Throughts Treasury

"See for the highest, aim at that highest, and you shall reach the highest."

"Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and everything shall be added unto you. This is the one great duty, this is renunciation. Live for an ideal, and leave no place in the mind for anything else. Let us put forth all our energies to acquire that which never fails--our spiritual perfection. If we have true yearning for realization, we must struggle, and through struggle growth will come. We shall make mistakes, but they may be angels unawares."

"Selfishness is the chief sin, thinking of ourselves first. He who thinks I will eat first, I will have more money than others, and I will possess everything; he who thinks I will get to heaven before others, I will get Mukti before others, is a selfish man. The unselfish man says, I will be last, I do not care to go to heaven, I will go to hell, if by doing so I can help my brothers. This unselfishness is the test of religion."

"Selfishness is the devil incarnate in every man. Every bit of self, bit by bit, is devil. Take off self by one side and God enters by the other."

"Self-realization is to be attained by renunciation, by meditation—renunciation of all the senses, cutting the knots, the chains that bind us down to matter."

"Self-sacrifice, not self-assertion, is the highest law of the universe....Religion comes with intense self-sacrifice. Desire nothing for yourself. Do all for others. This is to live and move and have your being in God."

"Shri Ramakrishna use to say, As Long as I Live, so long do I learn. That man or that society which has nothing to learn is already in the jaws of death."

"Serve man, serve God."

"Sincerity of conviction and purity of motive will surely gain the day, and even a small minority, armed with these is surely destined to prevail against all odds."

"So long as millions live in hunger and ignorance, I hold every person a traitor who, having been educated at their expense, pays not the least heed to them."

"Sit for some time and let the mind run on. You simply wait and watch. Knowledge is power, says the proverb, and that is true. Until you know what the mind is doing you cannot control it. Give it the rein; many hideous thoughts may come into it; you will be astonished that it was possible for you to think such thoughts. But you will find that each day the mind's vagaries are becoming less and less violent, that each day it is becoming calmer."

"Side by side, in the child, should be developed the power of concentration and detachment."

"Slowly this infinite giant is, as it were, waking up, becoming conscious of his power, and arousing himself; and with his growing consciousness, more and more of his bonds are breaking, chains are bursting asunder, and the day is sure to come when, with the full consciousness of his infinite power and wisdom, the giant will rise to his feet and stand erect. Let us all help to hasten that glorious consummation."

"So long as there is desire no real happiness can come. It is only the contemplative, witness-like study of objects that brings to us real enjoyment and happiness."

"So long as there is desire or want, it is a sure sign that there is imperfection. A perfect, free being cannot have any desire."

"Soft-brained people, weak-minded, chicken-hearted, cannot find the truth. One has to be free, and as broad as the sky."

"Spirituality can never be attained until materiality is gone."

"Some people are so afraid of losing their individuality. Wouldn’t it be better for the pig to lose his pig-individuality if he can become God? Yes. But the poor pig does not think so at the time. Which state is my individuality? When I was a baby sprawling on the floor trying to swallow my thumb? Was that the individuality I should be sorry to lose? Fifty years hence I shall look upon this present state and laugh, just as I now look upon the baby state. Which of these individualities shall I keep?"

"Stand as a rock; you are indestructible. You are the Self (atman), the God of the universe."

"Stand up and fight! Not one step back, that is the idea. Fight it out, whatever comes. Let the stars move from the spheres! Let the whole world stand against us! Death means only a change of garment. What of it? Thus fight! You gain nothing by becoming cowards. Taking a step backward, you do not avoid any misfortune. You have cried to all the gods in the world. Has misery ceased? … The gods come to help you when you have succeeded. So what is the use? Die game. … You are infinite, deathless, birthless. Because you are infinite spirit, it does not befit you to be a slave. Arise! Awake! Stand up and fight!"

"Stand up, be bold, be strong. Take the whole responsibility on your own shoulders, and know that you are the creator of your own destiny. All the strength and succor you want is within yourselves. Therefore, make your own future."

"Stand upon the Atman, then only can we truly love the world. Take a very, very high stand; knowing our universal nature, we must look with perfect calmness upon all the panorama of the world."

"Stick to God! Who cares what comes to the body or to anything else! Through the terrors of evil, say—my God, my love! Through the pangs of death, say—my God, my love! Through all the evils under the sun, say my God, my love!"

"Spit out your actions, good or bad, and never think of them again. What is done is done. Throw off superstition. Have no weakness even in the face of death. Do not repent, do not brood over past deeds, and do not remember your good deeds, be azad (free). ... You cannot undo, the effect must come, face it; but be careful never to do the same thing again. Give up the burden of all deeds to the Lord; give all, both good and bad. Do not keep the good and give only the bad. God helps those who do not help themselves."

"Stand up, be bold, and take the blame on your own shoulders. Do not go about throwing mud at others; for all the faults you suffer from, you are the sole and only cause."

"Strength is in goodness, in purity."

"Strength, strength for us. What we need is strength, who will give us strength? There are thousands to weaken us, and of stories we have had enough."

"Strength is the sign of vigor, the sign of life, the sign of hope, the sign of health, and the sign of everything that is good. As long as the body lives, there must be strength in the body, strength in the mind, strength in the hand."

"Struggle, struggle, was my motto for the last ten years. Struggle, still say I. When it was all dark, I used to say, struggle; when light is breaking in, I still say, struggle. Be not afraid, my children"

"Strength is life, weakness is death. Strength is felicity, life eternal, immortal. Weakness is constant strain and misery; weakness is death."

"Superstition is a great enemy of man, but bigotry is worse. Why does a Christian go to church? Why is the cross holy? Why is the face turned toward the sky in prayer? Why are there so many images in the Catholic Church? Why are there so many images in the minds of Protestants when they pray? My brethren, we can no more think about anything without a mental image than we can live without breathing. By the law of association the material image calls up the mental idea and vice versa. This is why the Hindu uses an external symbol when he worships. He will tell you, it helps to keep his mind fixed on the Being to whom he prays. He knows as well as you do that the image is not God, is not omnipresent. After all how much does omnipresence mean to almost the whole world? It stands merely as a word, a symbol. Has God superficial area? If not, when we repeat the word omnipresent, we think of the extended sky or of space, that is all."

"Suppose the Government give you all you need, where are the men who are able to keep up the things demanded? So make men first."

"Superstition is our great enemy, but bigotry is worse."

"Supposing that freedom is not your nature, by no manner of means can you become free. Supposing you were free and in some way you lost that freedom, that shows that you were not free to begin with. Had you been free, what could have made you lose it?"

"Swami, you have no idea of time, remarked an impatient American devotee, afraid of missing a steamer. No, retorted Swamiji calmly, you live in time; we live in eternity!"

"Swamiji: Well, it is necessary for one's own good. We become forgetful of the ego when we think of the body as dedicated to the service of others---the body with which most complacently we identify the ego. And in the long run comes the consciousness of disembodiedness. The more intently you think of the well-being of others, the more oblivious of self you become. In this way, as gradually your heart gets purified by work, you will come to feel the truth that your own Self is pervading all beings and all things. Thus it is that doing good to others constitutes a way, a means of revealing one's own Self or Atman."

"Take care! Beware of everything that is untrue; stick to truth, and we shall succeed, maybe slowly, but surely. Work as if on each of you depended the whole work."

"Take off the veil of hypnotism which you have cast upon the world, send not out thoughts and words of weakness unto humanity."

"Tell the truth boldly, whether it hurts or not. Never pander to weakness. If truth is too much for intelligent people and sweeps them away, let them go; the sooner the better."

"Thank God for giving you this world as a moral gymnasium to help your development, but never imagine you can help the world."

"Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life--think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success, and this is the way great spiritual giants are produced. Others are mere talking machines."

"Take up an idea, devote yourself to it, struggle on in patience, and the sun will rise for you."

"That man has reached immortality who is disturbed by nothing material."

"Take religion from human society and what will remain? Nothing but a forest of brutes. Sense-happiness is not the goal of humanity; wisdom is the goal of all life."

"That (meditation) is the highest state...When (the mind) is doubtful that is not its great state. Its great state is meditation. It looks upon things and sees things, not identifying itself with anything else."

"That singleness of attachment to a loved object, without which no genuine love can grow, is very often also the cause of the denunciation of everything else. All the weak and undeveloped minds in every religion or country have only one way of loving their own ideal, i.e. by hating every other ideal. Herein is the explanation of why the same man who is so lovingly attached to his own ideal of God, so devoted to his own ideal of religion, becomes a howling fanatic as soon as he sees or hears anything of any other ideal."

"That some will be stronger physically than others, and will thus naturally be able to subdue or defeat the weak, is a self-evident fact, but that because of this strength they should gather unto themselves all the attainable happiness of this life, is not according to law, and the fight has been against it. That some people through natural aptitude, should be able to accumulate more wealth than others, is natural; but that on account of this power to acquire wealth they should tyrannise and ride roughshod over those who cannot acquire so much wealth, is not part of the law, and the fight has been against that. The enjoyment of advantage over another is privilege, and throughtout ages, the aim of morality has been its destruction. This is the work which tends towards sameness, towards unity, without destroying variety."

"That which is nearest is least observed. The Atman is the nearest of the near, therefore a careless and unsteady mind gets no clue to the Atman. But one who is alert, calm, self-restrained, and discriminating, ignores the external world and, diving more and more into the inner world, realizes the glory of the Atman and becomes great."

"The animal has its happiness in the senses, the man in his intellect, and the god in spiritual contemplation. It is only to the soul that has attained to this contemplative state that the world really becomes beautiful. To him who desires nothing, and does not mix himself up with them, the manifold changes of nature are one panorama of beauty and sublimity."

"The Atman alone is eternal. Hospitals will tumble down. Railroad givers will all die. This earth will be blown to pieces, suns wiped out. The Atman endures for ever."