Source: Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna (1960), p. 138
“Self-knowledge is the only basis of true knowledge.”
“The great object of all knowledge is to enlarge and purify the soul”
"The Uses of Astronomy" (28 July 1856) http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/16227.
Context: The great object of all knowledge is to enlarge and purify the soul, to fill the mind with noble contemplations, to furnish a refined pleasure, and to lead our feeble reason from the works of nature up to its great Author and Sustainer. Considering this as the ultimate end of science, no branch of it can surely claim precedence of Astronomy. No other science furnishes such a palpable embodiment of the abstractions which lie at the foundation of our intellectual system; the great ideas of time, and space, and extension, and magnitude, and number, and motion, and power. How grand the conception of the ages on ages required for several of the secular equations of the solar system; of distances from which the light of a fixed star would not reach us in twenty millions of years, of magnitudes compared with which the earth is but a foot-ball; of starry hosts—suns like our own—numberless as the sands on the shore; of worlds and systems shooting through the infinite spaces
“The only true journey of knowledge is from the depth of one being to the heart of another.”
Ch. 1 http://books.google.com/books?id=BxRbAAAAMAAJ&q=%22The+only+true+journey+of+knowledge+is+from+the+depth+of+one+being+to+the+heart+of+another%22&pg=PA11#v=onepage
An American Dream (1965)
1 Corinthians 8:1
Source: Holy Hesychia: The Stillness that Knows God, p. 33
Commentarius in Posteriorum Analyticorum Libros (c. 1217-1220)
Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.23
Context: The words of God are justified, as I will show, by the fact that Job abandoned his first very erroneous opinion, and himself proved that it was an error. It is the opinion which suggests itself as plausible at first thought, especially in the minds of those who meet with mishap, well knowing that they have not merited them through sins. This is admitted by all, and therefore this opinion was assigned to Job. But he is represented to hold this view only so long as he was without wisdom, and knew God only by tradition, in the same manner as religious people generally know Him. As soon as he had acquired a true knowledge of God, he confessed that there is undoubtedly true felicity in the knowledge of God; it is attained by all who acquire that knowledge, and no earthly trouble can disturb it. So long as Job's knowledge of God was based on tradition and communication, and not on research, he believed that such imaginary good as is possessed in health, riches, and children, was the utmost that men can attain; this was the reason why he was in perplexity, and why he uttered the... opinions, and this is also the meaning of his words: "I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear; but now mine eye seeth thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent because of dust and ashes" (xlii. 5, 6); that is to say, he abhorred all that he had desired before, and that he was sorry that he had been in dust and ashes; comp. "and he sat down among the ashes" (ii. 8) On account of this last utterance, which implies true perception, it is said afterwards in reference to him, "for you have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job hath."
Source: Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality (1731), Ch. 5, sct. 7
