Swami Vivekananda - God Quotes

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True religion is not talk, or doctrines, or theories, nor is it sectarianism. It is the relation between soul and God. Religion does not consist in erecting temples, or building churches, or attending public worship. It is not to be found in books, or in words, or in lectures, or in organizations. Religion consists in realization. We must realize God, feel God, see God, talk to God. That is religion.

Swami Vivekananda
We may worship a picture as God, but not God as the picture. God in the picture is right, but the picture as God is wrong. God in the image is perfectly right. There is no danger there. This is the real worship of God. But the image-God is a mere Pratika.

Swami Vivekananda
As body, mind, or soul, you are a dream; you really are Being, Consciousness, Bliss (satchidananda). You are the God of this universe.

Swami Vivekananda
Each one of us pray, day and night, for the downtrodden millions in India, who are held fast by poverty, priest craft, and tyranny - pray day and night for them. I am no meta physician, no philosopher, nay, no saint. But I am poor, I love the poor.... Let these people be your God - think of them, work for them, pray for them incessantly - the Lord will show you the way.

Swami Vivekananda
This is no world. It is God Himself. In delusion we call it world.

Swami Vivekananda
There is one thing to be remembered: that the assertion — I am God — cannot be made with regard to the sense-world.

Swami Vivekananda
God is present in every Jiva; there is no other God besides that. Who serves Jiva serves God indeed.

Swami Vivekananda
Understanding human nature is the highest knowledge, and only by knowing it can we know God. It is also a fact that the knowledge of God is the highest knowledge, and only by knowing God can we understand human nature.

Swami Vivekananda
The essential thing in religion is making the heart pure; the Kingdom of Heaven is within us, but only the pure in heart can see the King. While we think of the world, it is only the world for us; but let us come to it with the feeling that the world is God, and we shall have God.

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

Swami Vivekananda
We can have no conception of God higher than man, so our God is man, and man is God.

Swami Vivekananda
Stick to God! Who cares what comes to the body or to anything else! Through the terrors of evil, say-my God, my love! Through the pangs of death, say-my God, my love! Through all the evils under the sun, say-my God, my love! Thou art here, I see Thee. Thou art with me, I feel Thee. I am Thine, take me. I am not of the world's but Thine, leave not then me.

Swami Vivekananda
All that is real in me is God; all that is real in God is I. The gulf between God and me is thus bridged. Thus by knowing God, we find that the kingdom of heaven is within us.

Swami Vivekananda
You cannot believe in God until you believe in yourself.

Swami Vivekananda
"The Kingdom of Heaven is within you." Where goest thou to seek for the Kingdom of God, asks Jesus of Nazareth, when it is there, within you? Cleanse the spirit, and it is there. It is already yours. How can you get what is not yours? It is yours by right. You are the heirs of immortality, sons of the Eternal Father.

Swami Vivekananda
Whatever others think or do, lower not your standard of purity, morality and love of God.

Swami Vivekananda
We have to go back to philosophy to treat things as they are. We are suffering from our own karma. It is not the fault of God. What we do is our own fault, nothing else. Why should God be blamed?

Swami Vivekananda
Pray all the time, read all the scriptures in the world, and worship all the gods there are... but unless you realize the Truth, there is no freedom.

Swami Vivekananda
Thank God for giving you this world as a moral gymnasium to help your development, but never imagine you can help the world.

Swami Vivekananda
You must also remember that the world has God to govern it, and He has not left it to our charity. The Lord God is its Governor and Maintainer, and in spite of these wine fanatics and cigar fanatics, and all sorts of marriage fanatics, it would go on. If all these persons were to die, it would go on none the worse.

Swami Vivekananda
May I be born again and again, and suffer thousands of miseries so that I may worship the only God that exists, the only God I believe in, the sum total of all souls-and, above all, my God the wicked, my God the miserable, my God the poor of all races, of all species, is the special object of my worship.

Swami Vivekananda
If I, as an Oriental have to worship Jesus of Nazareth, there is only one way, that is, to worship him as God and nothing else.

Swami Vivekananda
Christians are always wanting God to give them something. They appear as beggars before the throne of the Almighty.

Swami Vivekananda
Why are people so afraid? The answer is that they have made themselves helpless and dependent on others. We are so lazy, we do not want to do anything ourselves. We want a Personal God, a Savior or a Prophet to do everything for us.

Swami Vivekananda
We have not faith, we have not patience to see this. We trust the man in the street; but there is one being in the universe we never trust and that is God. We trust Him when He works just our way. But the time will come when, getting blow after blow, the self - sufficient mind will die. In everything we do, the serpent ego is rising up. We are glad that there are so many thorns on the path. They strike the hood of the cobra.

Swami Vivekananda
We must always remember that God is Love. "A fool indeed is he who, living on the banks of the Ganga, seeks to dig a little well for water. A fool indeed is the man who, living near a mine of diamonds, spends his life in searching for beads of glass." God is that mine of diamonds. We are fools indeed to give up God for legends of ghosts or flying hobgoblins. It is a disease, a morbid desire.

Swami Vivekananda
He in whose mind is no anger, hatred, or envy, who never loses his balance, dies, or is born, who is he but God?

Swami Vivekananda
In whatever name or form they are offered, all these flowers are laid at God's feet, for He is the one Lord of all, the one Soul of all souls.

Swami Vivekananda
The way to God is the opposite to that of the world. And to few, very few, are given to have God and mammon at the same time.

Swami Vivekananda
Dâna, charity. There is no higher virtue than charity. The lowest man is he whose hand draws in, in receiving; and he is the highest man whose hand goes out in giving. The hand was made to give always. Give the last bit of bread you have even if you are starving. You will be free in a moment if you starve yourself to death by giving to another. Immediately you will be perfect, you will become God.

Swami Vivekananda