This world is a mixture of sand and sugar. Like the ant, one should discard the sand and eat the sugar. He who can eat the sugar is clever indeed. Build a quiet place for thinking of God – a place for meditation.
(p.912, The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, Thakur’s words to the devotees at Shyampukur on 29 Oct, 1885.)
If you pray to Him (Sri Ramakrishna) constantly before His picture, then he manifests himself through that picture. The place where the picture is kept becomes a shrine.
(p.100, The Gospel of the Holy Mother, Mother’s words to Swami Arupananda at Udbodhan prayer-hall on 29 Oct, 1910)
This world is nothing. It is at best only a hideous caricature, a shadow of the Reality. We must go to the Reality. Renunciation will take us to It. Renunciation is the very basis of our true life; every moment of goodness and real life that we enjoy is when we do not think of ourselves. This little separate self must die. Then we shall find that we are in the Real, and that Reality is god, and He is our own true nature, and He is always in us and with us. Let us live in Him and stand in Him. It is the only joyful state of existence. Life on the plane of the Spirit is the only life, and let us all try to attain to this realization.
(p.174, Vol.2, Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Swamiji in his lecture ‘Realisation’ delivered in London on 29 Oct, 1896.)