In spite of the incurable differences of pleasure and pain, there has also been the struggle to alleviate them. Every period of history has given birth to thousands of men and women who have worked hard to smooth the passage of life for others. And how far have they succeeded? We can only play at driving the ball from one place to another. We take away pain from the physical plane, and it goes to the mental one. It is like that picture in Dante's hell where the misers were given a mass of gold to roll up a hill. Every time they rolled it up a little, it again rolled down. All our talks about the millennium are very nice as school-boys' stories, but they are no better than that. All nations that dream of the millennium also think that, of all peoples in the world, they will have the best of it then for themselves. This is the wonderfully unselfish idea of the millennium!

Can we do good to the world? In an absolute sense, no; in a relative sense, yes. No permanent or everlasting good can be done to the world; if it could be done, the world would not be this world. We may satisfy the hunger of a man, but he will be hungry again. Every pleasure may be seen to be momentary. No one can permanently cure this ever-recurring fever of pleasure and pain.

Karma Yoga. New York, 1896.

The wind of God's grace is blowing on, for ever and ever. You must spread your sail. Whenever you do anything, do it with your whole heart concentrated on it. Think day and night, "I am of the essence of that Supreme Being-Consciousness-Bliss. What fear and anxiety have I? This body, mind, and intellect are all transient, and One who is beyond these is me."