God is cruel and not cruel. He is all being and not being at the same time. Hence He is all contradictions. Nature also is nothing but a mass of contradictions.

With the attraction for lust and lucre working the other way, how many long for the realisation of God?

If you have knowledge and see a man weak, do not condemn him. Go to his level and help him if you can. He must grow.

The forms have value only so far as they are expressions of the life within. If they have ceased to express life, crush them out without mercy.

To succeed, you must have tremendous perseverance, tremendous will.

Pleasure is not the goal of man, but knowledge. Pleasure and happiness comes to an end. It is a mistake to suppose that pleasure is the goal. The cause of all the miseries we have in the world is that men foolishly think pleasure to be the ideal to strive for. After a time man finds that it is not happiness, but knowledge, towards which he is going, and that both pleasure and pain are great teachers.

Sri Ramakrishna is far greater than the disciples understand him to be. He is the embodiment of infinite spiritual ideas capable of development in infinite ways....One glance of his gracious eyes can create a hundred thousand Vivekanandas at this instant. If he chooses now, instead, to work through me, making me his instrument, I can only bow to his will.