Quotes from Paramahansa Yogananda

A wish is a desire without energy

If you have a strong mind and plant in it a firm resolve, you can change your destiny.

Environment is stronger than will.

The true basis of religion is not belief, but intuitive experience. Intuition is the soul's power of knowing God. To know what religion is really all about, one must know God.

Death is only an experience through which you are meant to learn a great lesson: you cannot die.

Many people excuse their own faults but judge other persons harshly. We should reverse this attitude by excusing others' shortcomings and by harshly examining our own.

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

Fear was given to man as a cautionary device to spare him pain; it is not mean to be cultivated and abused.

To face death itself should not daunt you. Fear of death is ridiculous, because as long as you are not dead you are alive, and when you are dead there is noting more to worry about!

The soul's first adventure is the fight between two ideas: the wish to return to earth in a human form, and the desire to feel the freedom of having no form.

Coercion or compulsion never brings about growth. It is freedom that accelerates evolution.

Forget the past, for it is gone from your domain! forget the future, for it is beyond your reach! control the present! Live supremely well now! This is the way of the wise.

The happiness of one's own heart alone cannot satisfy the soul; one must try to include, as necessary to one's own happiness, the happiness of others.

Little stones that are pelted into the lake of consciousness should not throw the whole lake into commotion.

The man form is higher than the angel form of all forms it is the highest. Man is the highest being in creation, because he aspires to freedom.

Let my soul smile through my heart and my heart smile through my eyes, that I may scatter rich smiles in sad hearts.

Untrained warriors are soon killed on the battlefield; so also persons untrained in the art of preserving their inner peace are quickly riddled by the bullets of worry and restlessness in active life.

Truth is exact correspondence with reality.

The kingdom of God is just behind the darkness of closed eyes, and the first gate that opens to it is your peace.

Be as simple as you can be; you will be astonished to see how uncomplicated and happy your life can become.

You may control a mad elephant; You may shut the mouth of the bear and the tiger; Ride the lion and play with the cobra; By alchemy you may learn your livelihood; You may wander through the universe incognito; Make vassals of the gods; be ever youthful; You may walk in water and live in fire; But control of the mind is better and more difficult.

Read a little. Meditate more. Think of God all the time.

You must not let your life run in the ordinary way; do something that nobody else has done, something that will dazzle the world. Show that God's creative principle works in you.

Making others happy, through kindness of speech and sincerity of right advice, is a sign of true greatness. To hurt another soul by sarcastic words, looks, or suggestions, is despicable.