Top 150 Ramakrishna Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “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.”

— Ramakrishna

2. “Knowledge leads to unity, but ignorance to diversity.”

— Ramakrishna

3. “The tree laden with fruits always bends low. If you wish to be great, be lowly and meek.”

— Ramakrishna

4. “As long as I live, so long do I learn.”

— Ramakrishna

5. “All troubles come to an end when the ego dies.”

— Ramakrishna

6. “Man suffers through lack of faith in God.”

— Ramakrishna

7. “If you want to go east, don’t go west.”

— Ramakrishna

8. “The breeze of grace is always blowing; set your sail to catch that breeze.”

— Ramakrishna

9. “When the flower blooms, the bees come uninvited.”

— Ramakrishna

10. “The fabled musk deer searches the world over for the source of the scent which comes from itself.”

— Ramakrishna

11. “When you meditate, go into the solitude of a forest, or a quiet corner, and enter into the chamber of your heart. And always keep your power of discrimination awake.”

— Ramakrishna

12. “The winds of grace are always blowing, but you have to raise the sail.”

— Ramakrishna

13. “To work without attachment is to work without the expectation of reward...”

— Ramakrishna

14. “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.”

— Ramakrishna

15. “Why does God allow evil in the world? To thicken the plot.”

— Ramakrishna

16. “So many religions, so many paths to reach the one and the same goal.”

— Ramakrishna

17. “At a certain stage in the path of devotion, the devotee finds satisfaction in God with form, and at another stage, in God without it.”

— Ramakrishna

18. “Whoever wants God intensely, finds Him. Go and verify it in your own life.”

— Ramakrishna

19. “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.”

— Ramakrishna

20. “Brahman is beyond mind and speech, beyond concentration and meditation, beyond the knower, the known and knowledge, beyond even the conception of the real and unreal. In short, It is beyond all relativity.”

— Ramakrishna

21. “It is the mind that makes one wise or ignorant, bound or emancipated.”

— Ramakrishna

22. “God is in all men, but all men are not in God; that is why we suffer.”

— Ramakrishna

23. “An ocean of bliss may rain down from the heavens, but if you hold up only a thimble, that is all you receive.”

— Ramakrishna

24. “Pray to Him anyway you like, He can even hear the footfall of an ant.”

— Ramakrishna

25. “Different creeds are but different paths to reach the same God.”

— Ramakrishna

26. “If a man prays to Thee with a yearning heart, he can reach Thee, through Thy grace, by any path.”

— Ramakrishna

27. “The world is impermanent. One should constantly remember death.”

— Ramakrishna

28. “One cannot be spiritual as long as one has shame, hatred, or fear.”

— Ramakrishna

29. “It is on account of the ego that one is not able to see God. In front of the door of God’s mansion lies the stump of ego. One cannot enter the mansion without jumping over the stump.”

— Ramakrishna

30. “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.”

— Ramakrishna

31. “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.”

— Ramakrishna

32. “It is not lust alone that one should be afraid of in the life of the world. There is also anger. Anger arises when obstacles are placed in the way of desire.”

— Ramakrishna

33. “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.”

— Ramakrishna

34. “If you spent one-tenth of the time you devoted to distractions like chasing women or making money to spiritual practice, you would be enlightened in a few years.”

— Ramakrishna

35. “Forgiveness is the true nature of the ascetic.”

— Ramakrishna

36. “Man needs a guru. But a man must have faith in the guru’s words. He succeeds in spiritual life by looking on his guru as God Himself.”

— Ramakrishna

37. “The grace of God is a wind which is always blowing.”

— Ramakrishna

38. “When the divine vision is attained, all appear equal; and there remains no distinction of good and bad, or of high and low.”

— Ramakrishna

39. “If a white cloth is stained even with a small spot, the stain appears very ugly indeed. So the smallest fault of a holy man becomes painfully prominent.”

— Ramakrishna

40. “Through selfless work, love of God grows in heart.”

— Ramakrishna

41. “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.”

— Ramakrishna

42. “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.”

— Ramakrishna

43. “It is true that God is even in the tiger, but we must not go and face the animal. So it is true that God dwells even in the most wicked, but it is not meet that we should associate with the wicked.”

— Ramakrishna

44. “Bondage and Liberation are of the mind alone.”

— Ramakrishna

45. “You see many stars in the sky at night, but not when the sun rises. Can you therefore say that there are no stars in the heavens during the day? Because you cannot find God in the days of your ignorance, say not that there is no God.”

— Ramakrishna

46. “If you feel proud, let it be in the thought that you are the servant of God, the son of God. Great men have the nature of a child. They are always a child before Him; so they are free from pride. All their strength is of God and not their own. It belongs to Him and comes from Him.”

— Ramakrishna

47. “The world is indeed a mixture of truth and make-believe. Discard the make-believe and take the truth.”

— Ramakrishna

48. “One cannot attain divine knowledge till one gets rid of pride. Water does not stay on the top of a mound; but into low land it flows in torrents from all sides.”

— Ramakrishna

49. “As a piece of rope, when burnt, retains its form, but cannot serve to bind, so is the ego which is burnt by the fire of supreme Knowledge.”

— Ramakrishna

50. “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.”

— Ramakrishna