Top 350 Paramahansa Yogananda Quotes (2025 Update)
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251. “Before embarking on important undertakings, sit quietly, calm your senses and thoughts, and meditate deeply. You will then be guided by the great creative power of Spirit. After that you should utilize all necessary material means to achieve your goal.”

— Paramahansa Yogananda

252. “Feel body as luxury – as a bird feels when shooting through the air, and as a child does always – is health.”

— Paramahansa Yogananda

253. “We should bathe our spirits in the deep, pure feeling that stirs within us when we gaze on the glories of His creation. This is the way to know God as beauty.”

— Paramahansa Yogananda

254. “To face death itself should not daunt you. Fear of death is ridiculous, because as long as you are not dead you are alive, and when you are dead there is noting more to worry about!”

— Paramahansa Yogananda

255. “The rains of Life’s Blessings cannot gather on mountaintops of pride, but flow easily into valleys of humbleness.”

— Paramahansa Yogananda

256. “Love cannot be had for the asking; it comes only as a gift from the heart of another.”

— Paramahansa Yogananda

257. “One may have many teachers, but only one guru, who remains as one’s guru even in many different lives, until the disciple reaches the final goal of emancipation in God. You must remember this, once that relationship is formed.”

— Paramahansa Yogananda

258. “I am the Cosmic Ocean of sound and the little wave of the body vibration in it.”

— Paramahansa Yogananda

259. “Divisions are imaginary lines drawn by small minds.”

— Paramahansa Yogananda

260. “Attachment is blinding; it lends an imaginary halo of attractiveness to the object of desire.”

— Paramahansa Yogananda

261. “The body is literally manufactured and sustained by mind.”

— Paramahansa Yogananda

262. “God is my life. God is my love. God is the temple that calls my heart to unceasing worship. God is my Goal. No duty can be performed without the power borrowed from God, so my highest duty is to find Him.” Without that attitude of devotion and determination one cannot know God.”

— Paramahansa Yogananda

263. “Whatever I do, I do with the greatest love that I have in me. Try this, and you will see that you do not become fatigued at all. Love is one of the greatest stimulants to the will. Under the influence of love the will can do almost anything.”

— Paramahansa Yogananda

264. “To repeat a prayer-demand over and over again, whether mentally or out loud, with ever-deeper attention and devotion, spiritualizes the prayer; it changes conscious, concentrated repetition into superconscious experience.”

— Paramahansa Yogananda

265. “The ancient rishis discovered these laws of sound alliance between nature and man. Because nature is an objectification of Aum, the Primal Sound or Vibratory Word, man can obtain control over all natural manifestations through the use of certain mantras or chants.”

— Paramahansa Yogananda

266. “Be afraid of nothing. Hating none, giving love to all, feeling the love of God, seeing His presence in everyone, and having but one desire – for His constant presence in the temple of your consciousness – that is the way to live in this world.”

— Paramahansa Yogananda

267. “The body is a treacherous friend. Give it its due; no more. Pain and pleasure are transitory; endure all dualities with calmness, trying at the same time to remove yourself beyond their power. Imagination is the door through which disease as well as healing enters. Disbelieve in the reality of sickness even when you are ill; an unrecognized visitor will flee!”

— Paramahansa Yogananda

268. “Those in the West who have adopted Christ as their own should remember that he was an Oriental. Love and sympathy for Jesus should be expanded into love and sympathy for all Orientals, and for all the world.”

— Paramahansa Yogananda

269. “It is foolish to be afraid of death. Just think. No more repaired tires on the body vehicle, no more patchwork living.”

— Paramahansa Yogananda

270. “Truths are more than imagination; they are real. Yet their origin is a thought in the mind of God.”

— Paramahansa Yogananda

271. “You go often into the silence, but have you developed anubhava?” He was reminding me to love God more than meditation. “Do not mistake the technique for the Goal.”

— Paramahansa Yogananda

272. “Fulfilling one’s earthly responsibilities need not separate man from God, provided he maintains mental uninvolvement with egotistical desires and plays his part in life as a willing instrument of the Divine.”

— Paramahansa Yogananda

273. “Make up your mind that you will be happy whether you are rich or poor, healthy or unhealthy, happily married or unhappily married, young or old, smiling or crying. Don’t wait for yourself, your family, or your surroundings to change before you can be happy within yourself. Make up your mind to be happy within yourself, right now, whatever you are, or wherever you are.”

— Paramahansa Yogananda

274. “When you say to me that you can’t do this or that, I don’t believe it. Whatever you make up your mind to do, you can do. God is the sum total of everything, and His image is within you. He can do anything, and so can you, if you learn to identify yourself with His inexhaustible nature.”

— Paramahansa Yogananda

275. “The ancient rishi Patanjali defines “yoga” as “control of the fluctuations of the mind-stuff.”

— Paramahansa Yogananda

276. “The initiative to undertake your most important duty in life is often buried beneath the accumulated debris of human habits.”

— Paramahansa Yogananda

277. “The Spirit could not create matter as anything different from Itself, for it had only Itself as the tissue or material with which to build the cosmos.”

— Paramahansa Yogananda

278. “The spiritual man is trying to free himself from the materiality that is the cause of his prodigal wandering in the maze of incarnations, but the ordinary man does not want more than a betterment of his earthly existence.”

— Paramahansa Yogananda

279. “Keen intelligence is two-edged,” Master once remarked in reference to Kumar’s brilliant mind. “It may be used constructively or destructively, like a knife, either to cut the boil of ignorance, or to decapitate oneself. Intelligence is rightly guided only after the mind has acknowledged the inescapability of spiritual law.”

— Paramahansa Yogananda

280. “Good manners without sincerity are like a beautiful dead lady,” he remarked on suitable occasion. “Straightforwardness without civility is like a surgeon’s knife, effective but unpleasant. Candor with courtesy is helpful and admirable.”

— Paramahansa Yogananda

281. “The kingdom of God is just behind the darkness of closed eyes, and the first gate that opens to it is your peace.”

— Paramahansa Yogananda

282. “The soul must stretch over the cosmogonic abysses, while the body performs its daily duties.”

— Paramahansa Yogananda

283. “It is I who have watched over thee, life after life, in the tenderness of many mothers! See in My gaze the two black eyes, the lost beautiful eyes, thou seekest!”

— Paramahansa Yogananda

284. “The poet is intimate with truth, while the scientist approaches awkwardly.”

— Paramahansa Yogananda

285. “The body of the average man is like a fifty-watt lamp, which cannot accommodate the billion watts of power roused by an excessive practice of Kriya. Through gradual and regular increase of the simple and foolproof methods of Kriya, man’s body becomes astrally transformed day by day, and is finally fitted to express the infinite potentials of cosmic energy, which constitutes the first materially active expression of Spirit.”

— Paramahansa Yogananda

286. “Illusion works impenetrable, Weaving webs innumerable; Her gay pictures never fail, Crowd each other, veil on veil; Charmer who will be believed By man who thirsts to be deceived.”

— Paramahansa Yogananda

287. “Present, past, future, no more for me, But ever-present, all-flowing I, I, everywhere. Planets, stars, stardust, earth, Volcanic bursts of doomsday cataclysms, Creation’s molding furnace, Glaciers of silent x-rays, burning electron floods, Thoughts of all men, past, present, to come, Every blade of grass, myself, mankind, Each particle of universal dust, Anger, greed, good, bad, salvation, lust, I swallowed, transmuted all Into a vast ocean of blood of my own one Being!”

— Paramahansa Yogananda

288. “Yoga is, as I can readily believe, the perfect and appropriate method of fusing body and mind together so that they form a unity which is scarcely to be questioned. This unity creates a psychological disposition which makes possible intuitions that transcend consciousness.”

— Paramahansa Yogananda

289. “Apply the experiences of peace and poise received during concentration and meditation to your daily life. Maintain your equilibrium amidst trying circumstances, and stand unshaken by others’ violent emotions or by adverse events. Body.”

— Paramahansa Yogananda

290. “The time will come when mankind will begin to get away from the consciousness of needing so many material things. More security and peace will be found in the simple life.”

— Paramahansa Yogananda

291. “I have left a few paltry rupees, a few petty pleasures, for a cosmic empire of endless bliss. How then have I denied myself anything? I know the joy of sharing the treasure. Is that a sacrifice? The shortsighted worldly folk are verily the real renunciates! They relinquish an unparalleled divine possession for a poor handful of earthly toys!”

— Paramahansa Yogananda

292. “A man will be beloved if, possessed with great power, he still does not make himself feared.”

— Paramahansa Yogananda

293. “Be inwardly ever newly joyous, like the ever-fresh laughing waters of a gurgling brook.”

— Paramahansa Yogananda

294. “We should pattern our life by a triangular guide: calmness and sweetness are the two sides; the base is happiness. Every day, one should remind himself: ” I am a prince of peace, sitting on the throne of poise, directing my kingdom of activity.” Whether one acts quickly or slowly, in solitude or in the busy marts of men, his center should be peaceful, poised.”

— Paramahansa Yogananda

295. “Those who are socially inclined will find a new power to help humanity through the lessons of books written by noble and gifted people.”

— Paramahansa Yogananda

296. “You don’t know what is going to come to you in this world; you have to go on living and worrying. Those who die are pitying us; they are blessing us. Why should you grieve for them?”

— Paramahansa Yogananda

297. “Plain living and high thinking should be your goal. Learn to carry all the conditions of happiness within yourself by meditating and attuning your consciousness to the ever-existing, ever-conscious, ever-new Joy, which is God. Your happiness should never be subject to any outside influence. Whatever your environment is, don’t allow your inner peace be touched by it.”

— Paramahansa Yogananda

298. “The Creative Vibration vitalizes the individual life force in the body, which conduces to health and well-being, and can be consciously directed as healing power to those in need of divine aid.”

— Paramahansa Yogananda

299. “I come not to entertain you with worldly festivities but to arouse your sleeping memory of immortality.”

— Paramahansa Yogananda

300. “Alike in soul though diverse in outer experience, neither West nor East will flourish if some form of disciplinary yoga be not practiced.”

— Paramahansa Yogananda