Ramakrishna Quotes

A thing may be too sad to be believed or too wicked to be believed or too good to be believed; but it cannot be too absurd to be believed in this planet of frogs and elephants, of crocodiles and cuttle-fish.

There is no place to which we could flee from God, which is outside of God.

For no part of Creation is left void of him: he has filled all things everywhere.

We are called to be contemplatives. ..by seeking the face of God in everything, everyone, everywhere, all the time.

Because when I get to heaven, the first face that shall ever gladden my sight will be that of my Savior.

The nearer we are to God, the less we will have occasions to cry or weep. The further we are from God, the more will long faces come. The more we know God, the more misery vanishes.

Nature is none other than God in things. Animals and plants are living effects of Nature; whence all of God is in all things. Think thus, of the sun in the crocus, in the narcissus, in the heliotrope, in the rooster, in the lion.

Love every leaf, every ray of light. Love the animals, love the plants, love each separate thing. Loving all, you will perceive the mystery of God in all.

God is everywhere or nowhere, the father of all people or of none, concerned about everything or nothing. Only in His presence shall we learn that the glory of humankind is not in its will to power but in its power of compassion.

God is in the tiger as well as in the lamb.

When they face desperation... human beings become animals.

We should understand well that all things are the work of the Great Spirit. We should know the Great Spirit is within all things: the trees, the grasses, the rivers, the mountains, and the four-legged and winged peoples; and even more important, we should understand that the Great Spirit is also above all these things and peoples. When we do understand all this deeply in our hearts, then we will fear, and love, and know the Great Spirit, and then we will be and act and live as the Spirit intends.

Though thou art far away, thy rays are on Earth; Though thou art in their faces, no one knows thy going.

The Divine has loved me as mother, as father, and as friend, behind all friends. I searched for that one Friend behind all friends, that one lover whom I now see glimmering in all your faces. And that friend never fails me.

When we meet a person truly in need, do we see the face of God?

Put God behind everything-human beings, animals, food, and work. Make this a habit.

Can you see air you breathe? Can you see the force that moves the tides or changes the seasons or sends the birds to a winter haven?" Her eyes welled. "Can Rome with all its knowledge be so foolish? Oh Marcus, you can't carve God in stone. You can't limit him to a temple. You can't imprison him on a mountaintop. Heaven is his throne; earth, his footstool. Everything you see is his. Empires will rise and empires will fall. Only God prevails.

Heretics are wicked, but they're mighty int'resting. It's jest that they've got sorter lost looking for God, being under the impression that He's hard to find - which He ain't never.

The abode of God, too, is wherever is earth and sea and air, and sky and virtue. Why further do we seek the Gods of heaven? Whatever thou dost behold and whatever thou dost touch, that is Jupiter.

Jesus is the human face on the kingdom of God. He makes it concretely accessible.

It is through an unbroken chain of witnesses that we come to see the face of Jesus.

The one thing that remains is looking in the face of God for ourselves.

Do not seek God in outer space-- Your heart is the only place in which to meet Him face to face.

We know that God is everywhere; but certainly we feel His presence most when His works are on the grandest scale spread before us; and it is in the unclouded night-sky, where His worlds wheel their silent course, that we read clearest His infinitude, His omnipotence, His omnipresence.

We Indians do not teach that there is only one god. We know that everything has power, including the most inanimate, inconsequential things. Stones have power. A blade of grass has power. Trees and clouds and all our relatives in the insect and animal world have power. We believe we must respect that power by acknowledging it's presence. By honoring the power of the spirits in that way, it becomes our power as well. It protects us.