Quotes from Ramana Maharshi

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

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 calling it time, you divide it into days and nights, months, years, hours, minutes, etc. Time is immaterial for the Path of Knowledge. But some of these rules and discipline are good for beginners.

When one remains without thinking one understands another by means of the universal language of silence.

Everything in the world was my Guru.

If you hold this feeling of 'I' long enough and strongly enough, the false 'I' will vanish leaving only the unbroken awareness of the real, immanent 'I', consciousness itself

Know that the eradication of the identification with the body is charity, spiritual austerity and ritual sacrifice; it is virtue, divine union and devotion; it is heaven, wealth, peace and truth; it is grace; it is the state of divine silence; it is the deathless death; it is jnana, renunciation, final liberation and bliss.

Do what is right at a given moment and leave it behind

What is illusion? M.: To whom is the illusion? Find it out. Then illusion will vanish. Generally people want to know about illusion and do not examine to whom it is. It is foolish. Illusion is outside and unknown. But the seeker is considered to be known and is inside. Find out what is immediate, intimate, instead of trying to find out what is distant and unknown.

Remain still, with the conviction that the Self shines as everything yet nothing, within, without, and everywhere.

Mind your business. Take care of what you came here for. Find the 'I' first and you may afterwards speak of other matters.

Your concentration must come as easily as the breath. Fix yourself on one thing and try to hold onto it. All will come right. Meditation is sticking to one thought. That single thought keeps away other thoughts. The dissipated mind is a sign of its weakness. By constant meditation it gains strength.

The pure mind is itself Brahman; it therefore follows that Brahman is not other than the mind of the sage.

The explorers seek happiness in finding curiosities, discovering new lands and undergoing risks in adventures. They are thrilling. But where is pleasure found? Only within. Pleasure is not to be sought in the external world.

Does a man who is acting on the stage in a female part forget that he is a man? Similarly, we too must play our parts on the stage of life, but we must not identify ourselves with those parts.

The mind is by nature restless. Begin liberating it from its restlessness; give it peace; make it free from distractions; train it to look inward; make this a habit. This is done by ignoring the external world and removing the obstacles to peace of mind.

Grace is always present. You imagine it is something somewhere high in the sky, far away, and has to descend. It is really inside you, in your Heart, and the moment you effect subsidence or merger of the mind into its Source, grace rushes forth, sprouting as from a spring within you

You are awareness. Awareness is another name for you. Since you are awareness there is no need to attain or cultivate it.

It will come all right in the end.

The enquiry 'Who am I?' is the principal means to the removal of all misery and the attainment of the supreme bliss.

All are gurus to us, the wicked by their evil deeds say 'do not come near me'. the good are always good, therefore all are like gurus to us.

The revelation or intuition arises in its own time and one must wait for it.

Complete surrender does require that you have no desire of your own, that God's desire alone is your desire and that you have no desire of your own.

The Power that created you has created the world as well. If it can take care of you, it can similarily take care of the world also. If God has created the world, it is His business to look after it, not yours.

You are already that which you seek