In plain words
Embodiments of Prema! Every year we celebrate this 19 November as Women's Day. What is this Women's Day? Is Women's Day celebrated merely by learning a few sacred things, holding some programmes and listening to Swami's discourse? No, no. Above all, you must make your time fruitful. The programmes you take up on this 19th you must keep as an ideal all your lives. You must develop an exemplary life. You must build up your self-confidence. Whatever hardships and losses come, you must not waver but keep your self-respect. Once self-respect is lost, what is the use of a person living on? If wealth goes, never mind; if strength goes, never mind. But self-respect you must not give up. This very thing Abraham Lincoln's mother taught him. Precisely because he nurtured his self-respect, he could become President of America.
Purity of thought, word and deed is humanness itself
The teachings mothers give have a great influence on their children. So mothers must foster good qualities and good conduct in their children. These very things we call Satya, Dharma, Śānti, Prema and Ahiṃsā. Everyone gives lectures about them, but how many put them into practice? In ancient times our people of Bhārata would not break Satya in any situation. “Satyān nāsti paro dharmaḥ”: there is no Dharma higher than Satya. The Veda too teaches, ‘Speak Satya, follow Dharma.’ What we think, what we say and what we do must be one. This is true humanness. The thought you think in the heart and the word you speak with the mouth must both be shown in action. But the conduct of man today runs wholly against this. He does not speak out the thoughts in his mind. There is no link at all between the words he speaks and the deeds he does. Man's life is going to waste precisely because he has entered so impure a path.