Sri Ramakrishna Quotes and Sayings

• If a man repeats the name of God, his body, mind, and everything become pure.
   
• Even if one lives in the world, one must go into solitude now and then. It will be of great help to a man if he goes away from his family, lives alone, and weeps for God even for three days. Even if he thinks of God for one day in solitude, when he has the leisure, that too will do him good. People shed a whole jug of tears for wife and children. But who cries for the Lord? Now and then one must go into solitude
  and practise spiritual discipline to realize God.
   
• The disease of worldliness is like typhoid. And there are a huge jug of water and a jar of savoury pickles in the typhoid patient's room. If you want to cure him of his illness, you must remove him from that room. The worldly man is like the typhoid patient. The various objects of enjoyment are the huge jug of water, and the craving for their enjoyment is his thirst. The very thought of pickles makes the
  mouth water; you don't have to bring them near. And he is surrounded with them. The companionship of woman is the pickles. Hence treatment in solitude is necessary.
   
• God cannot be realized without purity of heart. One receives the grace of God by subduing the passions—lust, anger, and greed.
   
• Suicide is a heinous sin, undoubtedly. A man who kills himself must
  return again and again to this world and suffer its agony.
   
• There are two ways. One is the path of discrimination, the other is that of love. Discrimination means to know the distinction between the Real and the unreal. God alone is the real and permanent Substance; all else is illusory and impermanent. The magician alone is real; his magic is illusory. This is discrimination.
   
• Do you know what God with form is like? Like bubbles rising on an expanse of water, various divine forms are seen to rise out of the Great akasa of Consciousness. The Incarnation of God is one of these forms. The Primal Energy sports, as it were, through the activities of a Divine Incarnation.
   
• One ultimately discovers God by trying to know who this ' I ' is. Is this ' I ' the flesh, the bones, the blood, or the marrow? Is it the mind or the buddhi? Analysing thus, you realize at last that you are none of these. This is called the process of 'Neti, neti', 'Not this, not this'. One can neither comprehend nor touch the Atman. It is without qualities or attributes.