Ramana Maharshi

“No one succeeds without effort.... Those who succeed owe their success to their perseverance.”

“Your own Self-Realization is the greatest service you can render the world.”

“You are already that which you seek”

“That which comes and goes, rises and sets, is born and dies is the ego. That which always abides, never changes, and is devoid of qualities is the Self.”

“It is the Higher Power which does everything, and the man is only a tool. If he accepts that position, he is free from troubles; otherwise, he courts them.”

“Like the practice of breath control, meditation on the forms of God, repetition of mantras, food restrictions, etc., are but aids for rendering the mind quiescent.”

“Concentration of the mind is in a way common to both Knowledge and Yoga. Yoga aims at union of the individual with the universal, the Reality. This Reality cannot be new. It must exist even...”

“You need not aspire for or get any new state. Get rid of your present thoughts, that is all.”

“Even the structure of the atom has been found by the mind. Therefore the mind is subtler than the atom. That which is behind the mind, namely the individual soul, is subtler than the mind.”

“Self-reform automatically brings about social reform.”

“If there is anything besides the Self there is reason to fear? Who sees the second? First, the ego arises and sees objects as external. If the ego does not rise, the Self alone exists and th...”

“For those who have obtained unobstructed knowledge of Self, the world is seen merely as a bondage causing imagination.”

“The Self is self-luminous without darkness and light, and is the reality which is self-manifest. Therefore, one should not think of it as this or as that. The very thought of thinking will e...”

“All bad qualities centre round the ego. When the ego is gone, Realisation results by itself. There are neither good nor bad qualities in the Self. The Self is free from all qualities. Qualit...”

“There is no doubt that breath control is the means for mind control because the mind, like breath, is a part of air; because the nature of mobility is common to both; because the place of or...”

“Who am I? Not the body, because it is decaying; not the mind, because the brain will decay with the body; not the personality, nor the emotions, for these also will vanish with death.”

“Think of God; attachments will gradually drop away. If you wait till all desires disappear before starting your devotion and prayer, you will have to wait for a very long time indeed.”

“Even as one and the same person is called by different names according to the different functions he performs, so also one and the same mind is called by the different names: mind, intellect...”

“When there are thoughts, it is distraction: when there are no thoughts, it is meditation.”

“Time is only an idea. There is only the Reality. Whatever you think it is, it looks like that. If you call it time, it is time. If you call it existence, it is existence, and so on. After ca...”