Swami Vivekananda Quotes

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Have faith in Guru, in his teachings, and in the surety that you can get free. Think day and night that this universe is zero, only God is. Have intense desire to get free.

Swami Vivekananda
Stand in that reverent attitude to the whole universe, and then will come perfect non attachment.

Swami Vivekananda
The same fire that cooks a meal for us may burn a child, and it is no fault of the fire if it does so; the difference lies in the way in which it is used.

Swami Vivekananda
A certain motion becomes understood when it is referred to a force; certain sensations, to matter; certain changes outside, to law; certain changes in thought, to mind; certain order singly, to causation - and joined to time, to law.

Swami Vivekananda
Until higher institutions have been evolved, any attempt to break the old ones will be disastrous.

Swami Vivekananda
It is the calm, forgiving, equable, well-balanced mind that does the greatest amount of work.

Swami Vivekananda
Books suggest the inner light and the method of bringing that out, but we can only understand them when we have earned the knowledge ourselves. When the inner light has flashed for you, let the books go, and look only within. You have in you all and a thousand times more than is in all the books. Never lose faith in yourself, you can do anything in this universe. Never weaken, all power is yours.

Swami Vivekananda
We have lost faith in ourselves. Therefore to preach the Advaita aspect of the Vedanta is necessary to rouse up the hearts of men, to show them the glory of their souls. It is therefore that I preach this Advaita, and I do so not as a sectarian, but upon universal and widely acceptable grounds.

Swami Vivekananda
Books never make religions, but religions make books. We must not forget that. No book ever created God, but God inspired all the great books. And no book ever created a soul.

Swami Vivekananda
My son, there is no rest for me. That which Sri Ramakrishna called "Kali" took possession of my body and soul three or four days before his passing away. That makes me work and work and never lets me keep still or look to my personal comfort.

Swami Vivekananda
Motion is always a relative thing. I move in relation to something else. Any particle in this universe can change in relation to any other particle; but take the whole universe as one, and in relation to what can it move? There is nothing besides it. So this infinite Unit is unchangeable, immovable, absolute, and this is the Real Man.

Swami Vivekananda
External motion we call action; internal motion is human thought.

Swami Vivekananda
There is but one soul throughout the universe, all is but one existence - "Thou art in the woman, thou in the man, thou in the young man walking in the pride of youth, thou in the old man tottering on his stick - thou art All - in all, in everything, and I am thee, because I am made from thee."

Swami Vivekananda
When the soul wants to depend upon nothing, not even upon life, that is the height of philosophy, the height of manhood.

Swami Vivekananda
Marriage or non-marriage, good or evil, learning or ignorance, any of these is justified, if it leads to the goal.

Swami Vivekananda
So we find that in almost every religion these are the three primary things which we have in the worship of God forms or symbols, names, God-men. All religions have these, but you find that they want to fight with each other...These are the external forms of devotion, through which man has to pass; but if he is sincere, if he really wants to reach the truth, he goes higher than these, to a plane where forms are as nothing.

Swami Vivekananda
"If you die, you get to heaven; and if you win, you enjoy the earth" (Gita). Even if you die in this attempt, well and good, many will take up the work, following your example. And if you succeed, you will live a life of great opulence.

Swami Vivekananda
Free thyself from the mighty attraction-
The maddening wine of love, the charm of sex.
Break the harp! Forward, with the ocean's cry!...

Swami Vivekananda
We shall have to work like lions, keeping the ideal before us, without caring whether "the wise ones praise or blame us".

Swami Vivekananda
What is marriage but the renunciation of unchastity? The savage does not marry. Man marries because he renounces.

Swami Vivekananda
What we call powers, secrets of nature, and force, are all within. In the external world are only a series of changes.

Swami Vivekananda
Knowledge of the Absolute depends upon no book, nor upon anything; it is absolute in itself. No amount of study will give this knowledge; is not theory, it is realization. Cleanse the dust from the mirror, purify your own mind, and in a flash you know that you are Brahman.

Swami Vivekananda
Who shall blame whom, who praise whom? Whom to seek, whom to avoid? I seek none, nor avoid any, for I am all the universe. I praise myself, I blame myself, I suffer for myself, I am happy at my own will, I am free. This is the Jnâni, the brave and daring. Let the whole universe tumble down; he smiles and says it never existed, it was all a hallucination. He sees the universe tumble down. Where was it! Where has it gone!

Swami Vivekananda
We must travel; we must go to foreign parts. We must see how the engine of society works in other countries, and keep free and open communication with what is going on in the minds of other nations, if we really want to be a nation again.

Swami Vivekananda
Unselfishness is more paying, only people have not the patience to practice it.

Swami Vivekananda
You nourish your minds by reading books. There is no good in doing that unless you hold it also as a sacrifice to the whole world. For the whole world is one; you are rated a very insignificant part of it, and therefore it is right for you that you should serve your millions of brothers rather than aggrandise this little self

Swami Vivekananda
Seeing a cat loving her kittens stand and pray. God has become manifest there; literally believe this. Repeat "I am Thine, I am Thine", for we can see God everywhere. Do not seek for Him, just see Him.

Swami Vivekananda
My child, what I want is muscles of iron and nerves of steel, inside which dwells a mind of the same material as that of which the thunderbolt is made.

Swami Vivekananda
The body is mortal and the mind is mortal; both, being compounds, must die.

Swami Vivekananda
Excepting the infinite spirit, everything else is changing. There is the whirl of change.

Swami Vivekananda