If we realized the presence of God as witness to all we say and do we would not have any thing to conceal from anybody on earth. For we would not think unclean thoughts before our Maker, much less speak them. It is uncleanness that seeks secrecy and darkness.

The tendency of human nature is to hide dirt, we do not want to see or touch dirty things; we want to put them out of sight. For we want to put them out of sight. And so must it be with our speech. I would suggest that we should avoid even thinking thoughts we would hide from the world.

Whatever you do, be true to ourselves and to the world. Hide not your thoughts. If it is shameful to reveal them, it is more shameful to think them.

All sins are committed in secrecy. The moment we realize that God witnesses even our thoughts we shall be free.

Control over thought is along and painful and laborious process. But I am convinced that no time, no labour and no pain is too much for the glorious result to be reached. The purity of thought is possible only with a faith in God bordering on definite experience.

When your passions threaten to get the better of you, go down on your knees and cry out to God for help. Ramanama is my infallible Help.

Let every aspirant after a pure life take from me that an impure thought is often powerful in undermining the body as an impure act.

The potency of thought unsuppressed but unembodied is far greater than that of embodied that is translated into action. And when the action is brought under due control, it reacts upon and regulates the thought itself. Thought thus translated into action becomes a prisoner and is brought under subjection.

Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed. Always at purifying your thoughts and everything will be well. There is nothing more potent than thought. Deed follows word and word follows thought. The word is the result of a mighty thought and where the thought is mighty and pure the result is always mighty and pure.

Man often becomes what he believes himself to be. If I keep on saying to myself that I cannot do a certain thing, it is possible that I May end by really becoming incapable of doing it. On the contrary, if I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even If may not have it at the beginning.

Prayerful well-meaning effort never goes in vain and man's success lies only in such an effort. The result is in his hands.

'Be thou certain, none can perish, trusting Me,' says the Lord, but let it not be understood to mean that our sins will be washed away by merely trusting Him without an y striving. Only he who struggles hard against the allurements of sense objects and turns in tears and grief to the Lord will be comforted.

It is easy enough to say, 'I do not believe in God.' For God permits all things to be said of Him with impunity. He looks at our acts. And any breach of His Law carries with it, not its vindictive, but its purifying, compelling, punishment.

The path of self-purification is hard and steep. To attain to perfect purity one has to become absolutely passion free in thought, speech and action; to rise above the opposing currents of love and hatred, attachment and repulsion.

I believe that a healthy soul should inhabit a healthy body. To the extent, therefore, that the soul grows into health and freedom from passion, to that extent the body also grows into that state.

Cleanliness is next to godliness. We can no more gain God's blessings with an unclean body than with an unclean mind. A clean body cannot reside in an unclean city.

Restraint never ruins one's health. What ruins one's health is not restraint but outward suppression. A really self-restrained person grows every day from strength to strength and from peace to more peace. The very first step in self-restraint is the restraint of thoughts.

An innocent youth is a priceless possession not to be squandered away for the sake of a momentary excitement, miscalled pleasure.

Steam becomes a mighty power only when it allows itself to be imprisoned in a strong little reservoir and produces tremendous motion and carries huge weights by permitting itself a tiny and measured outlet. Even so have the youth of the country of their own free will to allow their inexhaustible in strictly measured and required quantities.

As a splendid palace deserted by its inmates looks like a ruin, so does a man without character, all his material belongings notwithstanding.

All our learning or recitation of the Vedas, correct knowledge of Sanskrit, Latin, Greek and what not will avail us nothing if they do not enable us to cultivate absolute purity of heart. The end of all knowledge must be building up of character.

Knowledge without character is a power for evil only, as seen in the instances of so many 'talented thieves' and 'gentleman rascals' in the world.

Drugs and drink are the two arms of the devil with which he strikes his helpless victims into stupefaction and intoxication.

When Satan comes disguised as a champion of liberty, civilization, culture and the like he make himself almost irresistible.

I hold drink to be more damnable than thieving and perhaps even prostitution thieving and perhaps even prostitution. Is it not often the parent of both?

People drink because of the conditions to which they are reduced. It is the factory labourers and others that drink. They are forlorn, uncared for and they take to drink. They are no more vicious by nature than teetotalers are saints by nature. The majority of people are controlled by their environment.

Nothing but ruins stares a nation in the face that is a prey to the drink habit. History records that empires have been destroyed through that habit.

There is as much flaw in the argument that it is an interference with the right of the people as there would be in the argument that the laws prohibiting theft interfere with the right of thieving. A thief steals all earthy possessions, a drunkard steals his own and his neighbors' honour.

I have a horror of smoking as of wines. Smoking I consider to be a vice. It deadens one's conscience and is often worse than drink in that it acts imperceptible. It is a habit which is difficult to get rid of when once it seizes hold of a person. It is an expensive vice. It fouls the breath, discolors teeth and sometimes even causes cancer. It is an unclean habit.

Smoking is in a way a greater curse than drink inasmuch as the victim does not realize its evil in time. It is not regarded as assign of barbarism, it is even a claimed by the civilized people. I can only say, let those who can, give it up and set the example.