Swami Vivekananda Quotes

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Whether you bathe in the Ganga for a thousand years or live on vegetable food for a like period, unless it helps towards the manifestation of the Self, know that it is all of no use.

Swami Vivekananda
Everything can be sacrificed for truth, but truth cannot be sacrificed for anything.

Swami Vivekananda
Each one of us reaps what we ourselves have sown. These miseries under which we suffer, these bondages under which we struggle, have been caused by ourselves, and none else in the universe is to blame. God is the least to blame for it.

Swami Vivekananda
Through faithful practice, layer after layer of the mind opens before us, and each reveals new facts to us.

Swami Vivekananda
No better commentary on the Vedas has been written or can be written.

Swami Vivekananda
I hate this world, this dream, this horrible nightmare, with its churches and chicaneries, its books and blackguardisms, its fair faces and false hearts, its howling righteousness on the surface and utter hollowness beneath and, above all, its sanctified shopkeeping!

Swami Vivekananda
Rama, the ancient idol of the heroic ages, the embodiment of truth, of morality, the ideal son, the ideal husband, and above all, the ideal king, this Rama has been presented before us by the great sage Valmiki. No language can be purer, none chaster, none more beautiful, and at the same time simpler, than the language in which the great poet has depicted the life of Rama.

Swami Vivekananda
Every idea has to become broad till it covers the whole of this world, every aspiration must go on increasing till it has engulfed the whole of humanity, nay, the whole of life, within its scope.

Swami Vivekananda
You have no more anger when you are all love, bliss, infinite existence....

Swami Vivekananda
In all our Yogas this renunciation is necessary. This is the stepping-stone and the real centre and the real heart of all spiritual culture - renunciation. This is religion - renunciation.

Swami Vivekananda
Even forgiveness, if weak and passive, is not true: fight is better. Forgive when you could bring legions of angels to the victory.

Swami Vivekananda
The chief helps in this liberation are Abhyasa and Vairagya. Vairagya is non - attachment to life, because it is the will to enjoy that brings all this bondage in its train; and Abhyasa is constant practice of any one of the Yogas.

Swami Vivekananda
Do not hate anybody, because that hatred which comes out from you must, in the long run, come back to you. If you love, that love will come back to you, completing the circle.

Swami Vivekananda
With the attraction for lust and lucre working the other way, how many long for the realisation of God?

Swami Vivekananda
The sea calm is the Absolute; the same sea in waves is Divine Mother.

Swami Vivekananda
Whenever power is used for evil, it becomes diabolical; it must be used for good only.

Swami Vivekananda
The greatest force is derived from the power of thought. The finer the element, the more powerful it is. The silent power of thought influences people even at a distance, because mind is one as well as many. The universe is a cobweb; minds are spiders.

Swami Vivekananda
Now is wanted intense Karma-Yoga with unbounded courage and indomitable strength in the heart. Then only will the people of the country be roused.

Swami Vivekananda
"The fool, dwelling on the bank of the Ganga, digs a well for water!" Such are we! Living in the midst of God - we must go and make images.

Swami Vivekananda
If the Lord wills, we shall make this Math a great centre of harmony. Our Lord is the visible embodiment of the harmony of all ideals. He will be established on earth if we keep alive that spirit of harmony here. We must see to it that people of all creeds and sects, from the Brahmana down to the Chandala, may come here and find their respective ideals manifested.

Swami Vivekananda
If you are angry, and then happy, the next moment the anger passes away. Out of that anger you manufactured the next state. These states are always interchangeable. Eternal happiness and misery are a child's dream.

Swami Vivekananda
In the English character, the "give and take" policy, the business principle of the trader, is principally inherent.

Swami Vivekananda
It is always for greater joy that you give up the lesser. This is practical religion-the attainment of freedom, renunciation. Renounce the lower so that you may get the higher. Renounce! Renounce! Sacrifice! Give up! Not for zero. Not for nothing. But to get the higher.

Swami Vivekananda
Even if our every attempt is a failure, and we bleed and are torn asunder, yet, through all this, we have to preserve our heart - we must assert our Godhead in the midst of all these difficulties.

Swami Vivekananda
Learn to feel yourself in other bodies, to know that we are all one. Throw all other nonsense to the winds. Spit out your actions, good or bad, and never think of them again. What is done is done. Throw off superstition. Have no weakness even in the face of death. Be free.

Swami Vivekananda
One way for attaining Bhakti is by repeating the name of God a number of times. Mantras have effect: the mere repetition of words.... To obtain Bhakti, seek the company of holy men who have Bhakti, and read books like the Gita and the Imitation of Christ; always think of the attributes of God.

Swami Vivekananda
Help and not fight. Assimilation and not destruction. Harmony and Peace and not dissension.

Swami Vivekananda
I do not call it religion so long as it is confined to books and dogmas.

Swami Vivekananda
This doctrine of prenatal influence is now slowly being recognized, and science as well as religion calls out: 'Keep yourself holy, and pure.' So deeply has this been recognized in India, that there we even speak of adultery in marriage, except when marriage is consummated in prayer.

Swami Vivekananda
Every one is as much bound in thought, word, deed, and mind, as a piece of stone or this table. That I talk to you now is as rigorous in causation as that you listen to me. There is no freedom until you go beyond Maya. That is the real freedom of the soul.

Swami Vivekananda