Paramahansa Yogananda

“All honest work is good work; it is capable of leading to self-development, provided the doer seeks to discover the inherent lessons and makes the most of the potentialities for such growth.”

“The yogi should meditate on a firm seat, one that is clean - untainted by dirt or unspiritual vibrations of others. The thought or life force emanating from an individual saturates the objects he uses and his dwelling.”

“The season of failure is the best time for sowing the seeds of success.”

“The ills attributed to an anthropomorphic abstraction called "society" may be laid more realistically at the door of Everyman. Utopia must spring in the private bosom before it can flower into civic virtue, inner reforms leading to outer ones. A man who has reformed himself will reform thousands.”

“Remain calm, serene, always in command of yourself. You will then find out how easy it is to get along.”

“The ideal of an all-sided education for youth had always been close to my heart. I saw clearly the arid results of ordinary instruction, aimed only at the development of body and intellect.”

“The physical ego, the active consciousness in man, should uplift its body-identified self into unity with the soul, its true nature; it should not allow itself to remain mired in the lowly delusive strata of the senses and material entanglement.”

“Only the wise know just where predestination ends and free will begins. Meanwhile, you must keep on doing your best, according to your own clearest understanding. you must long for freedom as the drowning man longs for air. Without sincere longing, you will never find God.”

“Truth is exact correspondence with reality.”

“Whoever comes to me finds me a mirror to whatever is in his heart. Thus, I try to help him to see qualities in himself that he needs to overcome.”

“A true yogi may remain dutifully in the world; there, he is like butter on water and not like the easily-diluted milk of unchurned and undisciplined humanity.”

“No one can be a yogi, maintaining a state of mental equilibrium, free from inner involvement in planned desireful activities, unless he has renounced identification with his ego and its unsatisfiable lust for the fruits of actions.”

“Yoga is a method for restraining the natural turbulence of thoughts, which otherwise impartially prevent all men, of all lands, from glimpsing their true nature of Spirit. Yoga cannot know a barrier of East and West any more than does the healing and equitable light of the sun.”