A perfect life is a contradiction in terms. Life itself is a state of continuous struggle between ourselves and everything outside. Every moment we are fighting actually with external nature, and if we are defeated, our life has to go. It is, for instance, a continuous struggle for food and air. If food or air fails, we die. Life is not a simple and smoothly flowing thing, but it is a compound effect. This complex struggle between something inside and the external world is what we call life. So it is clear that when this struggle ceases, there will be an end of life.

Man is the best mirror, and the purer the man, the more clearly he can reflect God.

Renunciation, and renunciation alone, is the real secret, the Mulamantra, of all Realisation.

Those who have succeeded in attaching or detaching their minds at will have succeeded in Pratyahara, which means gathering towards, checking the outgoing powers of the mind, freeing it from the thralldom of the senses. When we can do this, we shall really possess character; then alone we shall have taken a long step towards freedom. Before that, we are mere machines.

Make no conditions and none will be imposed.

One point of difference between Hinduism and other religions is that in Hinduism we pass from truth to truth-from a lower truth to a higher truth-and never from error to truth.

If the mind is intensely eager, everything can be accomplished—mountains can be crumbled into atoms.