Authors
Topics
Lists
Pictures
Resources
More about Swami Vivekananda
Swami Vivekananda -
Man
Quotes
153 Sourced Quotes
View all Swami Vivekananda Quotes
Source
Report...
This Maya is everywhere. It is terrible. Yet we have to work through it. The man who says that he will work when the world has become all good and then he will enjoy bliss is as likely to succeed as the man who sits beside the Ganga and says, "I will ford the river when all the water has run into the ocean."
Swami Vivekananda
Source
Report...
In one sense Brahman is known to every human being; he knows, "I am"; but man does not know himself as he is.
Swami Vivekananda
Source
Report...
The glory of man is that he is a thinking being. It is the nature of man to think and therein he differs from animals
Swami Vivekananda
Source
Report...
The animal man lives in the senses. If he does not get enough to eat, he is miserable; or if something happens to his body, he is miserable. In the senses both his misery and his happiness begin and end.
Swami Vivekananda
Source
Report...
As soon as extreme attachment comes, a man loses himself, he is no more master of himself, he is a slave.
Swami Vivekananda
Source
Report...
Great occasions rouse even the lowest of human beings to some kind of greatness, but he alone is the really great man whose character is great always, the same wherever he be.
Swami Vivekananda
Source
Report...
Never forget that a man is made great and perfect as much by his faults as by his virtues. So we must not seek to rob a nation of its character, even if it could be proved that the character was all faults.
Swami Vivekananda
Source
Report...
It is good and very grand to conquer external nature, but grander still to conquer our internal nature.... This conquering of the inner man, understanding the secrets of the subtle workings that are within the human mind, and knowing its wonderful secrets, belong entirely to religion.
Swami Vivekananda
Source
Report...
If you are pure, if you are strong, you, one man are equal to the whole world.
Swami Vivekananda
Source
Report...
If there be no eternal life, still the enjoyment of spiritual thoughts as ideals is keener and makes a man happier, whilst the foolery of materialism leads to competition and undue ambition and ultimate death, individual and national.
Swami Vivekananda
Source
Report...
We never want Him. We say, "Lord, give me a fine house." We want the house, not Him. "Give me health! Save me from this difficulty!" When a man wants nothing but Him, [he gets Him].
Swami Vivekananda
Source
Report...
Nature, body, mind go to death, not we. We neither go nor come. The man Vivekananda is in nature, is born and dies; but the Self we see as Vivekananda is never born and never dies. It is the eternal and unchangeable Reality.
Swami Vivekananda
Source
Report...
Principles must conquer in the long run, for that is the manhood of man.
Swami Vivekananda
Source
Report...
With everything we do in life we identify ourselves. Here is a man who says harsh words to me. I feel anger coming on me. In a few seconds anger and I are one, and then comes misery. Attach yourselves to the Lord and to nothing else, because everything else is unreal. Attachment to the unreal will bring misery. There is only one Existence that is real, only one Life in which there is neither object nor [subject]....
Swami Vivekananda
Source
Report...
Let me draw your attention to one thing which unfortunately we always forget: that is - "O man, have faith in yourself."
Swami Vivekananda
Source
Report...
Here lies the secret. Says Patanjali, the father of Yoga, "When a man rejects all the superhuman powers, then he attains to the cloud of virtue." He sees God. He becomes God and helps others to become the same. This is all I have to preach. Doctrines have been expounded enough. There are books by the million. Oh, for an ounce of practice!
Swami Vivekananda
Source
Report...
Oh, if only you knew yourselves! You are souls; you are Gods. If ever I feel like blaspheming, it is when I call you man.
Swami Vivekananda
Source
Report...
The devil comes in many guises-anger in the form of justice-passion in the form of duty. When it first comes, the man knows and then he forgets. Just as your pleaders' conscience; at first they know it is all Badmashi (roguery), then it is duty to their clients; at last they get hardened.
Swami Vivekananda
Source
Report...
Man is man so long as he is struggling to rise above nature, and this nature is both internal and external.
Swami Vivekananda
Source
Report...
Have faith in man, whether he appears to you to be a very learned one or a most ignorant one. Have faith in man, whether he appears to be an angel or the very devil himself. Have faith in man first, and then having faith in him, believe that if there are defects in him, if he makes mistakes, if he embraces the crudest and the vilest doctrines, believe that it is not from his real nature that they come, but from the want of higher ideals.
Swami Vivekananda
Source
Report...
Every successful man must have behind him somewhere tremendous integrity, tremendous sincerity, and that is the cause of his signal success in life. He may not have been perfectly unselfish; yet he was tending towards it. If he had been perfectly unselfish, his would have been as great a success as that of the Buddha or of the Christ. The degree of unselfishness marks the degree of success everywhere.
Swami Vivekananda
Source
Report...
Education is the manifestation of perfection present already in man. Religion is the manifestation of the divinity already in man.
Swami Vivekananda
Source
Report...
None of us have yet seen an ideally perfect man, and yet without that ideal we cannot progress.
Swami Vivekananda
Source
Report...
A man ought to live in this world like a lotus leaf, which grows in water but is never moistened by water; so a man ought to live in the world - his heart to God and his hands to work.
Swami Vivekananda
Source
Report...
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
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Quote of the day
Ultimately, America's answer to the intolerant man is diversity, the very diversity which our heritage of religious freedom has inspired.
Robert F. Kennedy
Swami Vivekananda
Born:
January 12, 1863
Died:
July 4, 1902
(aged 39)
More about Swami Vivekananda...
Featured Authors
Lists
Predictions that didn't happen
If it's on the Internet it must be true
Remarkable Last Words (or Near-Last Words)
Picture Quotes
Confucius
Philip James Bailey
Eleanor Roosevelt
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Popular Topics
life
love
nature
time
god
power
human
mind
work
art
heart
thought
men
day
×
Lib Quotes