Swami Vivekananda - Life Quotes

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Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life - think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success.

Swami Vivekananda
We must not forget that what I mean by the conquest of the world by spiritual thought is the sending out of the life-giving principles, not the hundreds of superstitions that we have been hugging to our breasts for centuries.

Swami Vivekananda
What the world wants is character. The world is in need of those whose life is one burning love, selfless. That love will make every word tell like a thunderbolt.

Swami Vivekananda
A tremendous stream is flowing toward the ocean, carrying us all along with it; and though like straws and scraps of paper we may at times float aimlessly about, in the long run we are sure to join the Ocean of Life and Bliss.

Swami Vivekananda
Each man has a mission in life, which is the result of all his infinite past Karma.

Swami Vivekananda
Anything that is secret and mysterious in these systems of yoga should be at once rejected. The best guide in life is strength. In religion, as in all other matters, discard everything that weakens you, have nothing to do with it.

Swami Vivekananda
The great lesson is, that unity is behind all. Call it God, Love, Spirit. Allah, Jehovah - it is the same unity that animates all life from the lowest animal to the noblest man.

Swami Vivekananda
To devote your life to the good of all and to the happiness of all is religion. Whatever you do for your own sake is not religion.

Swami Vivekananda
Do not be afraid of a small beginning. great things come afterwards. Be courageous. Do not try to lead your brethren, but serve them. The brutal mania for leading has sunk many a great ships in the waters of life. Take care especially of that, i.e. be unselfish even unto death, and work.

Swami Vivekananda
We have seen that our vigour, our strength, nay, our national life is in our religion.

Swami Vivekananda
"I do not want to get material life, do not want the sense-life, but something higher." That is renunciation. Then, by the power of meditation, undo the mischief that has been done.

Swami Vivekananda
Here in this blessed land, the foundation, the backbone, the life-centre is religion and religion alone.

Swami Vivekananda
We want to know in order to make ourselves free. That is our life: one universal cry for freedom.

Swami Vivekananda
Religion for a long time has come to be static in India. What we want is to make it dynamic. I want it to be brought into the life of everybody.

Swami Vivekananda
I am persuaded that a leader is not made in one life. He has to be born for it. For the difficulty is not in organisation and making plans; the test, the real test, of the leader, lies in holding widely different people together along the line of their common sympathies. And this can only be done unconsciously, never by trying.

Swami Vivekananda
Fear is death, fear is sin, fear is hell, fear is unrighteousness, fear is wrong life. All the negative thoughts and ideas that are in the world have proceeded from this evil spirit of fear.

Swami Vivekananda
Prana, according to the Vedanta, is the principle of life. It is like ether, an omnipresent principle; and all motion, either in the body or anywhere else, is the work of this Prana. It is greater than Akasha, and through it everything lives. Prana is in the mother, in the father, in the sister, in the teacher, Prana is the knower.

Swami Vivekananda
Renounce and give up. What did Christ say? "He that loseth his life for my sake shall find it." Again and again did he preach renunciation as the only way to perfection. There comes a time when the mind awakes from this long and dreary dream-the child gives up its play and wants to go back to its mother. Renunciation is not asceticism. Are all beggars Christ? Poverty is not a synonym for holiness; often the reverse.

Swami Vivekananda
Feel like Christ and you will be a Christ; feel like Buddha and you will be a Buddha. It is feeling that is the life, the strength, the vitality, without which no amount of intellectual activity can reach God.

Swami Vivekananda
If you want to have life, you have to die every moment for it. Life and death are only different expressions of the same thing looked at from different standpoints; they are the falling and the rising of the same wave, and the two form one whole.

Swami Vivekananda
The Upanishads do not reveal the life of any teacher, but simply teach principles.

Swami Vivekananda
If in this hell of a world one can bring a little joy and peace even for a day into the heart of a single person, that much alone is true; this I have learnt after suffering all my life; all else is mere moonshine.

Swami Vivekananda
To the Indian mind there is nothing higher than religious ideals, that this is the keynote of Indian life.

Swami Vivekananda
Weak or wicked, great or small, in men and in animal, resides the same omnipresent, omniscient soul. The difference is not in the soul, but in the manifestation. Between me and the smallest animal the difference is only of manifestation, but as a principle he is the same as I am, he is my brother, he has the same soul as I have. This is the principle of Universal Brotherhood of man with one another, with all life down to the little ants.

Swami Vivekananda
This is a great fact: strength is life; weakness is death. Strength is felicity, life eternal, immortal; weakness is constant strain and misery, weakness is death.

Swami Vivekananda