Sayings of Swami Vivekananda

2008-10-10T19:55:00.001+05:30

"To work you have the right, but not to the fruits thereof" (Gita, 2.47). We can train ourselves to know and to practice that, says the Karma Yogi. When the idea of doing good becomes a part of our very being, then we will not seek for any motive outside.

Class on Karma Yoga. New York, 1896. Complete Works, 1:116.

We have wept long enough; no more weeping, but stand on your feet and be men. It is a man-making religion that we want. It is man-making theories that we want. It is man-making education all around that we want. And here is the test of truth-anything that makes you weak physically, intellectually and spiritually, reject as poison; there is no life in it, it cannot be true. Truth is strengthening. Truth is purity, Truth is all knowledge. Truth must be strengthening, must be enlightening, must be invigorating.
All morality can be divided into the positive and the negative elements. It says either "Do this" or "Do not do this." When it says, "Do not," it is evident that it is a check to a certain desire which would make us slaves. When it says, "Do," its scope is to show the way to freedom and to the breaking down of a certain degradation which has already seized the human heart.
We cannot add happiness to the world. Similarly, we cannot add pain to it either. The sum total of the energies of pleasure and pain displayed here on earth will be the same throughout. We just push it from this side to the other side, and from that side to this, but it will remain the same, because to remain so is its very nature. This ebb and flow, this rising and falling, is in the world's very nature; it would be as logical to hold otherwise as to say that we may have life without death.
You have not caught my fire yet--you do not understand me! You run in the old ruts of sloth and enjoyments. Down with all sloth, down with all enjoyments here or hereafter. Plunge into the fire and bring the people towards the Lord. That you may catch my fire, that you may be intensely sincere, that you may die the heroes' death on the field of battle--is the constant prayer of Vivekananda.

The Highest Form of the Worship of God

Every duty is holy, and devotion to duty is the highest form of the worship of God.

From all of you I want this that you must discard for ever self-aggrandisement, faction-mongering, and jealousy. You must be all-forbearing like Mother Earth. If you can achieve this, the world will be at your feet.
This universe is simply a gymnasium in which the soul is taking exercise; and after these exercise we become GODS. So the value of everything is to be decided by how far it is a manifestation of God. Civilisation is the manifestation of that divinity in Man.
What we want is to see the man who is harmoniously developed.....................great in heart, great in mind,(great in deed)......................We want the man whose heart feels intensely the miseries and sorrows of the world..........................And(we want)the man who not only can feel but can find the meaning of things, who delves deeply into the heart of nature and understanding.(We want)the man who will not even stop there,(but)who wants to work out(the feeling and meaning by actual deeds).Such a combination of head, heart, and hand is what we want.
Now, a good deal of our physical evil we can get rid of, if we have control over the fine parts; a good many worries we can throw off, if we have control over the fine movements; a good many failures can be averted, if we have control over these fine powers.
Now freedom is only possible when no external power can exert any influence, produce any change. Freedom is only possible to the being who is beyond all conditions, all laws, all bondages of cause and effect. In other words, the unchangeable alone can be free and therefore, immortal. This Being, this Atman, this real Self of man, the free, the unchangeable is beyond all conditions, and as such, it has neither birth nor death.
Pleasure is not the goal of man, but knowledge. Pleasure and happiness come to an end. It is a mistake to suppose that pleasure is the goal. The cause of all the miseries we have in the world is that men foolishly think pleasure to be the ideal to strive for. After a time man finds that it is not happiness, but knowledge, towards which he is going, and that both pleasure and pain are great teachers, and that he learns as much from evil as from good.......................Good and evil have an equal share in moulding character, and in some instances misery is a greater teacher than happiness. In studying the great characters the world has produced, I dare say, in the vast majority of cases, it would be found that it was misery that taught more than happiness, it was poverty that taught more than wealth, it was blows that brought out their inner fire more than praise.
Because your thirst for spirituality has not come, therefore you are sitting idle.
The very idea of life implies death and the very idea of pleasure implies pain. The lamp is constantly burning out, and that is its life. If you want to have life, you have to die for it every moment. Life and death are only different expressions of the same thing looked at from different standpoints. They are the falling and rising of the same wave, and the two form one whole. One looks at the "fall" side and becomes a pessimist, another looks at the "rise" side and becomes an optimist.
When a boy is going to school and his father and mother are taking care of him, everything seems blessed to him; his wants are simple, he is a great optimist. But the old man, with his varied experience, becomes calmer, and is sure to have his warmth considerably cooled down. So, old nations, with signs of decay all around them, are apt to be less hopeful than new nations. There is a proverb in India: "A thousand years a city, and a thousand years a forest." This change of city into forest and visa versa is going on everywhere, and it makes people optimists or pessimists according to the side they see of it.
How can we all be equal here on earth? This impossible kind of equality implies total death. What makes the world what it is? Lost balance. In the primal state, which is called chaos, there is perfect balance. How do all the formative forces of the universe come by then? By struggling, competition, conflict. ... Inequality is the very basis of creation. At the same time, the forces struggling to obtain equality are as much a necessity of creation as those which destroy it.

Karma Yoga. New York, 1896. Complete Works, 1: 113-14

Absolute equality, that which means a perfect balance of all the struggling forces in all the planes, can never be in this world. Before you attain that state, the world will have become quite unfit for any kind of life, and no one will be there. We find, therefore, that all these ideas of the millennium and of absolute equality not only are impossible but also that, if we try to carry them out, they will lead us surely enough to the day of destruction.

Karma Yoga. New York, 1896. Complete Works, 1: 114

So long as this world lasts, differentiation there will and must be, and the millennium of perfect equality will come only when a cycle of creation comes to its end. Before that, equality cannot be. Yet this idea of realizing the millennium is a great motive power. Just as inequality is necessary for creation itself, so the struggle to limit it is also necessary. If there were no struggle to become free and get back to God, there would be no creation either. It is the difference between these two forces that determines the nature of people's motives. There will always be these motives to work, some tending towards bondage and others towards freedom.

Karma Yoga. New York, 1896. Complete Works, 1: 114-15

The methods of spiritual realization have the generic name, "yoga" (to join, to join ourselves to our reality). These yogas, though divided into various groups, can principally be classed into four; and as each is only a method of leading indirectly to the realization of the Absolute, they are suited to different temperaments.
My name should not be made prominent; it is my ideas that I want to see realized. The disciples of all the prophets have always inextricably mixed up the ideas of the Master with the person, and at last killed the ideas for the person. The disciples of Sri Ramakrishna must guard against doing the same thing. Work for the idea, not the person.
Do not fly away from the wheels of the world-machine, but stand inside it and learn the secret of work. Through proper work done inside, it is possible to come out. Through this machinery itself is the way out.
The whole scope of all systems of yoga (and each religion represents one) is to remove ignorance and allow the Ātman to restore its own nature. The chief helps in this liberation are abhyāsa and vairāgya. Vairāgya is non-attachment to life, because it is the will to enjoy that brings all this bondage in its train; and abhyāsa is constant practice of any one of the yogas.
Karma Yoga is a method of purifying the mind through work. ... All fear and all desire to enjoy here or hereafter must be banished for ever by the Karma Yogi. The karma without desire of return will destroy the selfishness, which is the root of all bondage. The watchword of the Karma Yogi is "not I, but Thou," and no amount of self-sacrifice is too much for such a person.
Coming and going is all pure delusion. The soul never comes nor goes. Where is the place to which it shall go when all space is in the soul? When shall be the time for the entering and departing when all time is in the soul?
For those who procrastinate regarding renunciation, saying, "Oh, not so soon! I shall do it when the time comes," Self-realization is very far off. "Let me realize the Truth this moment! In this very life!"--these are the words of a hero.
Work is a part of nature's foundation, and work always goes on. Those who believe in God understand this better, because they know that God is not such an incapable being as will need our help. Although this universe will go on always, our goal is freedom, our goal is unselfishness. According to Karma Yoga, that goal is to be reached through work.
God is very merciful to a person whom He sees struggling heart and soul for realization. But remain idle, without any struggle, and you will see that His grace will never come.
Truth can be stated in a thousand different ways, yet each one can be true.
Every man must begin where he stands, must learn how to control the things that are nearest to him.
All ideas of making the world perfectly happy may be good as motive powers for fanatics, but we must know that fanaticism brings forth as much evil as good. The Karma Yogi asks why you require any motive for work other than the inborn love of freedom. Be beyond the common worldly motives.
A mass of reading does not make men, those who were real men were made so by personal contact.
He who adjusts himself best lives the longest.
We point everything with ourselves.
Know it for certain that there is no greater Tirtha (holy spot) than the body of man.
There is no end to the power a man can obtain.
He is the best ruler who can serve well.
The whole universe must become prophets.
He who knows how to serve knows how to rule.
No man was ever born who could stop his body one moment from changing.
Man is very short-sighted and impatient.
But bold we must be. Hiding facts is not the way to find a remedy.
A man must follow the tendencies peculiar to himself.
The highest kind of men slightly collect true and noble ideas.
We have either to progress or to degenerate.
An intellect, heartless man never becomes an inspired man.
Our difficulty in life is that we are guided by the present and not by the future.
The greatest men in the world have passed away unknown.
It is our own mental attitude which makes the world what it is for us.
There is, however one great danger in human nature, viz, that man never examines himself.
No man is ever satisfied.
Man is a compound of animality, humanity and divinity.
The animal man lives in the senses.
It is a peculiar fact in human nature that it judges others according to its own standard of activity.
No man ought to take a hasty step.
We are all born savages and gradually civilise ourselves.
I pray that none may be dragged anywhere by the unseen power of his or her own past actions. I pray that all may be free, that is to say, may know that they are free. And if they are to dream again, let us pray that their dreams be all of peace and bliss.

Letter to Mrs. Ole Bull, on the occasion of the loss of her father. From Brooklyn: January 20, 1895. Complete Works, 5:69-70.

Let us do good because it is good to do good. Those who do good work even in order to get to heaven bind themselves down, says the Karma Yogi. Any work that is done with any the least selfish motive, instead of making us free, forges one more chain for our feet.

Class on Karma Yoga. New York, 1896. Complete Works, 1:116.

Persevere---- Never mined the struggles, the mistakes. Never mind these failures, these little backslidings; hold the ideal a thousand times; and if you fail a thousand times make the attempt once more.
The will is not free--it is a phenomenon caused by cause and effect--but there is something behind the will which is free.
Differentiation, infinitely contradictory, must remain, but it is not necessary that we should hate each other therefore; it is not necessary therefore that we should fight each other.
The gift of spirituality and spiritual knowledge is the highest, for it saves from many and many a birth; the next gift is secular knowledge, as it opens the eyes of human beings towards that spiritual knowledge; the next is the saving of life; and fourth is the gift of food.
Drink deep of the nectar of the knowledge of God.
Perfect life is a contradiction in terms. Therefore we must always expect to find things not up to our highest ideal. Knowing this we are bound to make the best of everything.
I am a Sannyasin, as such I consider myself as a servant, not as a Master in the world.
I want each one of my children to be a hundred times greater than I could ever be. Every one of you must be great--------------must, that is my word.
The greatness of little things, that is what the Gita teaches, bless the old book!
It is man that makes everything, what can money do?
If there is a God we must see Him, if there is a soul we must perceive it; otherwise it is better not to believe.
It is indeed very difficult to have an equal love for all, but without it there is no Mukti.
I am a fighter and shall die in the battle-field.
The disciples of all the prophets have always inextricably mixed up the ideas of the Master with the ‘person’ and at last killed the ideas for the ‘person’. The disciples of Sri Ramakrishna must guard against doing the same thing. Work for the ‘idea’ not the person.
That man has reached immortality who is disturbed by nothing material.
Stand on your own feet, and assimilate what you can; learn from every nation, take what is of use to you.
Send a good thought for every being in the three worlds.
Search truth for yourself; realise it yourself. Then if you find it beneficial to one and many, give it to people.
Sister, the way is long, the time is short, evening is approaching. I have to go home soon. I have no time to give my manners a finish. I cannot find time to deliver my message. You are good, you are so kind, I will do anything for you; and do not be angry, I see that you all are mere children.

Letter to Miss Mary Hale. From New York: February 1, 1895. Complete Works, 5:72.

Have something to say for yourself, else how can you have any idea of what others have said?
I once met a man in my country whom I had known before as a very stupid, dull person, who knew nothing and had not the desire to know anything, and was living the life of a brute. He asked me what he should do to know God, how he was to get free. "Can you tell a lie?" I asked him. "No," he replied. "Then you must learn to do so. It is better to tell a lie than to be a brute, or a log of wood. You are inactive; you have not certainly reached the highest state, which is beyond all actions, calm and serene; you are too dull even to do something wicked." That was an extreme case, of course, and I was joking with him; but what I meant was that a person must be active in order to pass through activity to perfect calmness.

Class on Karma Yoga. New York, 1895. Complete Works, 1:39-40

When you serve a Jiva with the idea that he is a Jiva, it is Daya (compassion) and not Prema (love); but when you serve him with the idea that he is the Self, that is Prema.
Those institutions should be encouraged by which men advance in the path of freedom.
Some people do the best work when ‘led’. Not every one is ‘born to lead’. The best leader, however, is one who ‘leads like the baby’. The baby, though apparently depending on every one, is the king of the house-hold.
We have lost ourselves and then think the world is lost.
Pain has its uses.
Reasoning is limiting something by our own mind.
The Masses will always have the ‘person’, the higher ones, the ‘principle’. We want both. But principles are universal, not persons.
Society has to pay homage to Truth or die.
Learn good knowledge with all devotion from the lowest caste.
Dream no more! Oh, dream no more, my soul! In one word, I have a message to give, I have no time to be sweet to the world, and every attempt at sweetness makes me a hypocrite. I will die a thousand deaths rather than lead a jellyfish existence and yield to every requirement of this foolish world--my own country or a foreign country.

Letter to Miss Mary Hale. From New York: February 1, 1895. Complete Works, 5:72.

Our heroes must be spiritual.
His love never fails.
Let distinctions of sex, caste, wealth, learning and the whole host of them which are so many gateways to hell, be confined to the world alone. If such distinctions persists in holy places of pilgrimage, where then lies the difference between them and hell itself?
If we can bring ourselves down by our Karma, surely it is in our power to raise ourselves by it.
We learn, through smiles and tears we learn.
To believe that mind is all, that thought is all, is only a higher materialism.
You are mistaken, utterly mistaken, if you think I have a work--I have no work under or beyond the sun. I have a message, and I will give it after my own fashion. I will neither Hinduize my message, nor Christianize it, nor make it any "ize" in the world. I will only my-ize it and that is all.

Letter to Miss Mary Hale. From New York: February 1, 1895.
Complete Works, 5:72.

The greatness of a teacher consists in the simplicity of his language.
Deepen your own power of thought and love.
Give up the so-called boast of your narrow orthodox life.
I can secure my own good only by doing you good.
Test everything, try everything, and then believe it, and if you find it for the good of many, give it to all.

A leader must be impersonal.
Bring all the forces of good together. Do not care under what banner you march. Do not care what be your colour-------green, blue, or red----------------but mix up all the colours and produce that intense glow of white, the colour of love.
Believe in man first. Why start with the belief that man is degraded and degenerated?
Morality is the path towards freedom, and immortality leads to bondage.

Prayer

Pray for knowledge and light, every other prayer is selfish.

A man should be free to think, especially spiritual thoughts.
Perfect purity ensures the most lasting allegiance and confidence.
Learn good knowledge with all devotion from the lowest caste.
All the powers in the universe are already ours. It is we who have put our hands before our eyes and cry that it is dark.
As different streams having different sources all mingle their waters in the sea, so different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to God.
External nature is only internal nature writ large.
If money help a man to do good to others, it is of some value; but if not, it is simply a mass of evil, and the sooner it is got rid of, the better.
That man has reached immortality who is disturbed by nothing material.
What is now wanted is a combination of the greatest heart with the highest intellectuality, of infinite love with the infinite knowledge.
Perfect love, the heart never reacting, this is what builds character.
Your way is the best for you, but that is no sign that it is the best for others.
Civilisation is the manifestation of that divinity in man.
The will is not free - it is a phenomenon bound by cause and effect - but there is something behind the will which is free.
The world is the great gymnasium where we come to make ourselves strong.
Truth can be stated in a thousand different ways, yet each one can be true.
What we are now is the result of our past practice.
He who will bow before him (Ramakrishna) will be converted into purest gold that very moment.
Never say any man is hopeless.

Difference

It is impossible that all difference can cease; it must exist; without variation life must cease.
Difference is the sauce of life, it is the beauty, it is the art of everything.

No man is to be judged by the mere nature of his duties, but all should be judged by the manner and the spirit in which they perform them.
Take the hands away and there is light; the light exists always for us, the self-effulgent nature of the human soul.
When an idea exclusively occupies the mind, it is transformed into an actual physical or mental state.
“Comfort” is no test of truth; on the contrary, truth is often far from being “comfortable.”
A few heart-whole, sincere, and energetic men and women can do more in a year than a mob in a century.
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.
You must not mistake sattva for dullness or laziness.
The reformers must be able to unite in themselves the culture of both the East and the West.
What is good for you may not be good for others.
Civilisation, true civilisation, should mean the power of taking the animal-man out of his sense-life.
Man never dies, nor is he ever born; bodies die, but he never dies.

Man the infinite dreamer, dreaming finite dreams!

Let there be as little materialism as possible, with the maximum of spirituality.
As body, mind, or soul, you are a dream; you really are Being, Consciousness, Bliss (satchidananda). You are the God of this universe.
As soon as I think that I am a little body, I want to preserve it, to protect it, to keep it nice, at the expense of other bodies; then you and I become separate.
Raise once more that mighty banner of Advaita, for on no other ground can you have that wonderful love until you see that the same Lord is present everywhere.
The only remedy for bad habits is counter habits.
Avoid excessive merriment. A mind in that state never becomes calm; it becomes fickle. Excessive merriment will always be followed by sorrow. Tears and laughter are near kin. People so often run from one extreme to the other.
Difference makes all beautiful here.
As soon as you know the voice and understand what it is, the whole scene changes. The same world which was the ghastly battlefield of maya is now changed into something good and beautiful.
The first requisite is to be moral.
Prayer with the lips was not enough; people should pray with their hearts.
There is implanted in every man, naturally, a strong desire for progress.
All desire is contained in the Self.
Every man has to make his own choice; so has every nation.
He (man of freedom) does good, because it is his nature, not because any fancied duty commands it.
Fire and enthusiasm must be in our blood.
Denunciation is not at all the way to do good.
There is no difference between theories and atheism. In fact, the atheist is the truer man.
Before you were an animal, now you are a man, and will be a god or God Himself in future.
Open the windows of your hearts to the clean light of truth, and sit like children at the feet of those who knows what they are talking about-------------------the sages of India.
Idle gossip and barren ceremonials won’t do.
Out of the past is built the future.
In and through all the literature voicing man’s struggle towards freedom, towards universal freedom, again and again you find the Indian Vedantic ideals coming out prominently.
The more we know the better for us.
Prayer and praise are the first means of growth.
The enjoyment of advantage over another is privilege. The fight is to destroy that privilege.
While we hope for anything, desire still rules us.
Instinct develops into reason, and reason into the transcendental consciousness.
Uniformity is the rigorous law of nature; what once happened can happen always.
The real is one. It is the mind which makes it appear as many.

Principles are the manhood of man

Principles must conquer in the long run, for that is the manhood of man.

Flying from work is never the way to find peace.
Do not look upon humanity as the centre of all your human and higher interests.
Hold your money merely as custodian for what is God’s.

What is moral

Everything that strengthens the will by revealing the real nature is moral.

There is no power on earth which can be kept long confined within a narrow limit.
Love matter and you become matter.
Mystery-mongering weakens the human brain.
Never say any man is hopeless.
The position of the mother is the highest in the world.
Devils are machines of darkness, angels are machines of light; but both are machines. Man alone is alive. Break the machine, strike the balance, and then man can become free. This is the only world where man can work out his salvation.
He who knows that he does not know, knows It.
There is too much talk, talk, talk!
Man comes from God in the beginning, in the middle he becomes man, and in the end he goes back to God.
All superstition should be banished.
From our childhood upwards we have been taught only to pay attention to things external, but never to things internal, hence most of us have nearly lost the faculty of observing the internal mechanism.
Seeing God is the aim and goal of all human life.
You know I am not much of a writer. I am not in the habit of going from door to door begging. I sit quiet and let things come to me.

Letter to Alasinga Perumal. From USA: May 6, 1895. Complete Works, 5.82.
We have indeed many things to learn from others; yea, that man who refuses to learn is already dead.
The true man is he who is strong as strength itself and yet possesses a woman’s heart.
In our families there are the heads; some of them are successful, others are not. Why? We complain of others in our failures. The moment I am unsuccessful, I say, so-and-so is the cause of the failure. In failure, one does not like to confess one’s own faults and weaknesses. Each person tries to hold himself faultless and lay the blame upon somebody or something else, or even on bad luck. When heads of families fail, they should ask themselves, why it is that some persons manage a family so well and others do not. Then you will find that the difference is owing to the man — his presence, his personality.

Coming to great leaders of mankind, we always find that it was the personality of the man that counted. Now, take all the great authors of the past, the great thinkers. Really speaking, how many thoughts have they thought? Take all the writings that have been left to us by the past leaders of mankind; take each one of their books and appraise them. The real thoughts, new and genuine, that have been thought in this world up to this time, amount to only a handful. Read in their books the thoughts they have left to us. The authors do not appear to be giants to us, and yet we know that they were great giants in their days. What made them so? Not simply the thoughts they thought, neither the books they wrote, nor the speeches they made, it was something else that is now gone, that is their personality. As I have already remarked, the personality of the man is two-thirds, and his intellect, his words, are but one-third. It is the real man, the personality of the man, that runs through us. Our actions are but effects. Actions must come when the man is there; the effect is bound to follow the cause.
The more must be your share of misery.
Hold to the idea, “I am not the mind, I see that I am thinking, I am watching my mind act,” and each day the identification of yourself with thoughts and feelings will grow less, until at last you can entirely separate yourself from the mind and actually know it to be apart from yourself.
If you think that you are bound, you remain bound; you make your own bondage. If you know that you are free, you are free this moment. This is knowledge, knowledge of freedom. Freedom is the goal of all nature.
As long as we believe ourselves to be even the least different from God, fear remains with us; but when we know ourselves to be the One, fear goes; of what can we be afraid?
Your Atman is the support of the universe—whose support do you stand in need of? Wait with patience and love and strength. If helpers are not ready now, they will come in time. Why should we be in a hurry? The real working force of all great work is in its almost unperceived beginnings.
Learning and wisdom are superfluities, the surface glitter merely, but it is the heart that is the seat of all power. It is not in the brain but in the heart that the Atman, possessed of knowledge, power, and activity, has its seat.
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.
Shri Krishna is the God of the poor, the beggar, the the sinner, the son, the father, the wife, and of everyone. He enters intimately into all our human relations and makes everything holy and in the end brings us to salvation. He is the God who hides himself from the philosopher and the learned and reveals himself to the ignorant and the children. He is the God of faith and love and not of learning. With the Gopis, love and God were the same thing — they knew Him to be love incarnate.
My life is more precious than spending it in getting the admiration of the world. I have no time for such foolery.
We have to bear in mind that we are all debtors to the world and the world does not owe us anything. It is a great privilege for all of us to be allowed to do anything for the world. In helping the world we really help ourselves.
The calm man is not the man who is dull.
Loving others is virtue, hating others is sin.
No other ideal can put into us the same mass of energy as the spiritual.
We want spiritual ideals before us, we want enthusiastically to gather round grand spiritual names.
There is a difference between an objective and actions. Unless you understand your objective, you will be wasting your time in actions. Know your objective first.

If the purpose of our life - Realization is in
the center, goodness is a closer circle to it and so called 'evil' is
a circle farther away from the center!!
Ethics, morals etc all are aids to take us closer to the ideal of
realization.
If money is lost, nothing is lost; if health is lost, something is lost; but if character is lost, everything is lost.

1. If the mind is intensely eager, everything can be accomplished—mountains can be crumbled into atoms.

2. Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life - think of it, dream of it, live on 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.

3. Come out into the universe of Light. Everything in the universe is yours, stretch out your arms and embrace it with love. If you every felt you wanted to do that, you have felt God.

4. All knowledge that the world has ever received comes from the mind; the infinite library of the universe is in our own mind.

5. Stand up, be bold, be strong. Take the whole responsibility on your own shoulders, and know that you are the creator of your own destiny. All the strength and succor you want is within yourself. Therefore make your own future. 6. There is no help for you outside of yourself; you are the creator of the universe. Like the silkworm you have built a cocoon around yourself…. Burst your own cocoon and come out of the beautiful butterfly, as the free soul. Then alone you will see Truth.

7. It is our own mental attitude which makes the world what it is for us. Our thought make things beautiful, our thoughts make things ugly. The whole world is in our own minds. Learn to see things in the proper light. First, believe in this world, that there is meaning behind everything. Everything in the world is good, is holy and beautiful. If you see something evil, think that you do not understand it in the right light. Throw the burden on yourselves!

8. Hold to the idea, “I am not the mind, I see that I am thinking, I am watching my mind act,” and each day the identification of yourself with thoughts and feelings will grow less, until at last you can entirely separate yourself from the mind and actually know it to be apart from yourself.

9. All love is expansion, all selfishness is contraction. Love is therefore the only law of life. He who loves lives, he who is selfish is dying. Therefore love for love’s sake, because it is law of life, just as you breathe to live.

10. Our duty is to encourage every one in his struggle to live up to his own highest idea, and strive at the same time to make the ideal as near as possible to the Truth.

11. Even the greatest fool can accomplish a task if it were after his or her heart. But the intelligent ones are those who can convert every work into one that suits their taste.

12. Condemn none: if you can stretch out a helping hand, do so. If you cannot, fold your hands, bless your brothers and let them go their own way.

13. Each work has to pass through these stages—ridicule, opposition, and then acceptance. Those who think ahead of their time are sure to be misunderstood.

14. If you think that you are bound, you remain bound; you make your own bondage. If you know that you are free, you are free this moment. This is knowledge, knowledge of freedom. Freedom is the goal of all nature.

15. As long as we believe ourselves to be even the least different from God, fear remains with us; but when we know ourselves to be the One, fear goes; of what can we be afraid?

16. Your Atman is the support of the universe—whose support do you stand in need of? Wait with patience and love and strength. If helpers are not ready now, they will come in time. Why should we be in a hurry? The real working force of all great work is in its almost unperceived beginnings.

17. Learning and wisdom are superfluities, the surface glitter merely, but it is the heart that is the seat of all power. It is not in the brain but in the heart that the Atman, possessed of knowledge, power, and activity, has its seat.

18. 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

19. Purity, patience, and perseverance are the three essentials to success and, above all, love.

20. 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.

21. Each soul is potentially divine. The goal is to manifest this divinity within by controlling nature, external and internal. Do this either by work, or worship or psychic control or philosophy - by one or more or all of these and be free.

The more we come out and do good to others, the more our hearts will be purified, and God will be in them.
“I loved my motherland dearly before I went to America and England. After my return, every particle of dust of this land seems sacred to me. "
Who will give the world light? Sacrifice in the past has been the Law, it will be, alas, for ages to come. The earth's bravest and best will have to sacrifice themselves for the good of many, for the welfare of all.
Truth, purity, and unselfishness - whenever these are present, there is no power below or above the sun to crush the possessor thereof. Equipped with these, one individual is able to face the whole universe in opposition.
Everything can be sacrificed for truth, but truth cannot be sacrificed for anything.
The highest ideal is eternal and entire self-abnegation, where there is no 'I', but is Thou'.
By work alone, men may get to where Buddha got largely by meditation or Christ by prayer. Buddha was a working Jnani, Christ was a Bhakta, but the same goal was reached by both of them.
All expansion is life, all contraction is death.
All love is expansion, all selfishness is contraction. Love is therefore the only law of life. He who loves lives, he who is selfish is dying. Therefore love for love's sake, because it is law of life, just as you breathe to live.
The national ideals of India are Renunciation and Service. Intensity in those channels, and the rest will take care of itself.
Good motives, sincerity, and infinite love can conquer the world. One single soul possessed of these virtues can destroy the dark designs of millions of hypocrites and brutes.
Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life - think of it, dream of it, live on 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..
Be not afraid, for all great power throughout the history of humanity has been with the people. From out of their ranks have come all the greatest geniuses of the world, and history can only repeat itself. Be not afraid of anything. You will do marvelous work.
Be perfectly resigned, perfectly unconcerned; then alone can you do any true work. No eyes can see the real forces; we can only see the results. Put out self, forget it; just let God work, it is His business.
Be strong! … You talk of ghosts and devils. We are the living devils. The sign of life is strength and growth. The sign of death is weakness. Whatever is weak, avoid! It is death. If it is strength, go down into hell and get hold of it! There is salvation only for the brave. "None but the brave deserves the fair." None but the bravest deserves salvation.
Be strong! Don’t talk of ghosts and devils. We are the living devils. The sign of life is strength and growth. The sign of death is weakness. Whatever is weak, avoid! It is death. If it is strength, go down into hell and get hold of it! There is salvation only for the brave.
Bless people when the revile you. Think how much good they are doing by helping to stamp out the false ego. Hold fast to the Atman, think only pure thoughts, and you will accomplish more than a regiment of mere preachers.
Bless people when they revile you. Think how much good they are doing by helping to stamp out the false ego. Hold fast to the real Self. Think only pure thoughts, and you will accomplish more than a regiment of mere preachers. Out of purity and silence comes the word of power.
Blows are what awaken us and help to break the dream. They show us the insufficiency of this world and make us long to escape, to have freedom.
Books are infinite in number and time is short. The secret of knowledge is to take what is essential. Take that and try to live up to it.
Both the forces of good and evil will keep the universe alive for us, until we awake from our dreams and give up this building of mud pies.
Brave, bold men and women, these are what we want. What we want is vigor in the blood, strength in the nerves, iron muscles and nerves of steel, not softening namby-pamby ideas. Avoid all these. Avoid all mystery. There is no mystery in religion.
Brave, bold people, these are what we want. What we want is vigor in the blood, strength in the nerves, iron muscles and nerves of steel, not softening namby-pamby ideas. Avoid all these. Avoid all mystery. There is no mystery in religion.
By doing well the duty which is nearest to us, the duty which is in our hands now, we make ourselves stronger; and improving our strength in this manner step by step, we may reach a state in which it shall be our privilege to do the most coveted and honored duties in life and in society.
By the Vedas no books are meant. They mean the accumulated treasury of spiritual laws discovered by different persons in different times. Just as the law of gravitation existed before its discovery, and would exist if all humanity forgot it, so is it with the laws that govern the spiritual world
Change is always subjective. All through evolution you find that the conquest of nature comes by change in the subject. Apply this to religion and morality, and you will find that the conquest of evil comes by the change in the subjective alone. That is how the Advaitic system gets its whole force, on the subjective side of man.
Change is always subjective. To talk of evil and misery is nonsense, because they do not exist outside. If I am immune from all anger, I never feel angry. If am immune from all hatred, I never feel hatred.
Come out into the broad light of day, come out from the little narrow paths, for how can the infinite soul rest content to live and die in small ruts?
Come out into the universe of Light. Everything in the universe is yours, stretch out your arms and embrace it with love. If you every felt you wanted to do that, you have felt God.
Delusion will vanish as the light becomes more and more effulgent, load after load of ignorance will vanish, and then will come a time when all else has disappeared and the sun alone shines.
Desire, ignorance, and inequality—this is the trinity of bondage.
Desire, want, is the father of all misery. Desires are bound by the laws of success and failure. Desires must bring misery. The great secret of true success, of true happiness, is this: the person who asks for no return, the perfectly unselfish person, is the most successful.
Despondency is not religion, whatever else it may be.
Discriminate within yourself between the real and the unreal. Have you not read the Vedanta? Even when you sleep, keep the sword of discrimination at the head of your bed, so that covetousness cannot approach you even in dream. Practicing such strength, renunciation will gradually come, and then you will see the portals of heaven are wide open to you.
Do any deserve liberty who are not ready to give it to others? Let us calmly go to work, instead of dissipating our energy in unnecessary fretting and fuming.
Do not go for glass beads leaving the mine of diamonds. This life is a great chance. What, seekest thou the pleasures of the world? He is the fountain of all bliss. See for the highest, aim at that highest, and you shall reach the highest.
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.
Do not look back upon what has been done. Go ahead!
Do you think these sannyasi children of Sri Ramakrishna are born to simply to sit under trees lighting dhuni-fires? Whenever any of them will take up some work, people will be astonished to see their energy. Learn from them how to work.
Don't look back—forward, infinite energy, infinite enthusiasm, infinite daring, and infinite patience—then alone can great deeds be accomplished.
Each work has to pass through these stages—ridicule, opposition, and then acceptance. Those who think ahead of their time are sure to be misunderstood.
Even the greatest fool can accomplish a task if it were after his or her heart. But the intelligent ones are those who can convert every work into one that suits their taste.
Every action that helps us manifest our divine nature more and more is good; every action that retards it is evil.
Every individual is a center for the manifestation of a certain force. This force has been stored up as the resultant of our previous works, and each one of us is born with this force at our back.
Every step I take in light is mine forever.
Everything must be sacrificed, if necessary, for that one sentiment: universality.
Experience is the only teacher we have. We may talk and reason all our lives, but we shall not understand a word of truth until we experience it ourselves.
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.
Fear is death, fear is sin, fear is hell, fear is unrighteousness. All the negative thoughts and ideas that are in this world have proceeded from this evil spirit of fear.
Fill the brain with high thoughts, highest ideals, place them day and night before you, and out of that will come great work.
First get rid of the delusion “I am the body,” then only will we want real knowledge.
First, believe in the world—that there is meaning behind everything.
Freedom can never be reached by the weak. Throw away all weakness. Tell your body that it is strong, tell your mind that it is strong, and have unbounded faith and hope in yourself.
Give up all desire for enjoyment in earth or heaven. Control the organs of the senses and control the mind. Bear every misery without even knowing that you are miserable. Think of nothing but spiritual freedom.
Go on saying, “I am free.” Never mind if the next moment delusion comes and says, “I am bound.” Dehypnotize the whole thing.
God is merciful to those whom He sees struggling heart and soul for realization. But remain idle, without any struggle, and you will see that His grace will never come.
God is not to be reached by the weak. Never be weak. You have infinite strength within you. How else will you conquer anything? How else will you come to God?
God is not to be reached by the weak. Never be weak. You have infinite strength within you. How else will you conquer anything? How else will you come to God?
God is self-evident, impersonal, omniscient, the Knower and the Master of nature, the Lord of all. He is behind all worship and it is being done according to Him, whether we know it or not.
God is very merciful to those whom He sees struggling heart and soul for spiritual realization. But remain idle, without any struggle, and you will see that His grace will never come.
Great work requires great and persistent effort for a long time. … Character has to be established through a thousand stumbles.
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.
Have you got the will to surmount mountain-high obstructions? If the whole world stands against you sword in hand, would you still dare to do what you think is right?
He whom the sages have been seeking in all these places is in our own hearts; the voice that you heard was right, says Vedanta, but the direction you gave to the voice was wrong.
Him I call a Mahatma ("great soul") whose heart bleeds for the poor, otherwise he is a Duratma ("wicked soul"). Let us unite our wills in continued prayer for their good.
Hold to the idea, “I am not the mind, I see that I am thinking, I am watching my mind act,” and each day the identification of yourself with thoughts and feelings will grow less, until at last you can entirely separate yourself from the mind and actually know it to be apart from yourself.
However we may receive blows, and however knocked about we may be, the Soul is there and is never injured. We are that Infinite.
I am no metaphysician, no philosopher, nay, no saint. But I am poor and I love the poor. I see what they call the poor of this country and how many there are who feel for them!
I fervently wish no misery ever came near anyone; yet it is that alone that gives us an insight into the depths of our lives, does it not? In our moments of anguish, gates barred forever seem to open and let in many a flood of light.
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!
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.
I have been asked many times, "Why do you laugh so much and make so many jokes?" I become serious sometimes--when I have a stomachache! The Lord is all blissfulness. He is the reality behind all that exists. He is the goodness, the truth in everything. You are His incarnations. That is what is glorious. The nearer you are to Him, the less you will have occasions to cry or weep. The further we are from Him, the more will long faces come. The more we know of Him, the more misery vanishes.
I, for one, thoroughly believe that no power in the universe can withhold from anyone anything they really deserve.
If a person who lives in God becomes miserable, what is the use of living in God? What is the use of such a God? Throw such a God overboard into the Pacific Ocean. We do not want such a God!
If a piece of burning charcoal be placed on a man’s head, see how he struggles to throw it off. Similar will be the struggle for freedom of those who really understand that they are slaves of nature.
If one who lives in the Lord becomes miserable, what is the use of living in Him? What is the use of such a God? Throw Him overboard into the Pacific Ocean. We do not want Him.
If superstition enters, the brain is gone.
If the mind is intensely eager, everything can be accomplished—mountains can be crumbled into atoms.
If there is no strength in body and mind, the Atman cannot be realized. First you have to build the body by good nutritious food—then only will the mind be strong.
If there is one word that you find coming out like a bomb from the Upanishads, bursting like a bombshell upon masses of ignorance, it is the word “fearlessness.”
If you really want the good of others, the whole universe may stand against you and cannot hurt you. It must crumble before your power of the Lord Himself in you if you are sincere and really unselfish.
If you think that you are bound, you remain bound; you make your own bondage. If you know that you are free, you are free this moment. This is knowledge, knowledge of freedom. Freedom is the goal of all nature.
If you want to be a yogi, you must be free, and place yourself in circumstances where you are alone and free from all anxiety. One who desires a comfortable and nice life and at the same time wants to realize the Self is like the fool who, wanting to cross the river, caught hold of a crocodile, mistaking it for a log of wood.
If you want to be a Yogi, you must be free, and place yourself in circumstances where you are alone and free from all anxiety. One who desires a comfortable and nice life and, at the same time, wants to realize the Atman is like the fool who, wanting to cross the river, caught hold of a crocodile mistaking it for a log of wood.
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.
Impurity is a mere superimposition under which your real nature has become hidden. But the real you is already perfect, already strong.
In Buddha we had the great, universal heart and infinite patience, making religion practical and bringing it to everyone’s door. In Shankaracharya we saw tremendous intellectual power, throwing the scorching light of reason upon everything. We want today that bright sun of intellectuality joined with the heart of Buddha, the wonderful infinite heart of love and mercy. This union will give us the highest philosophy. Science and religion will meet and shake hands. Poetry and philosophy will become friends.What! Those giants of old, the ancient Rishis, who never walked but strode, of whom if you were to think but for a moment you would shrivel up into a moth, they sir, had time--and you have no time!
In real meditation you forget the body. You may be cut to pieces and not feel it at all. You feel such pleasure in it. You become so light. This perfect rest we will get in meditation.
In the world take always the position of the giver. Give everything and look for no return. Give love, give help, give service, give any little thing you can, but keep out barter. Make no conditions and none will be imposed. Let us give out of our own bounty, just as God gives to us.
In the world take always the position of the giver. Give everything and look for no return. Give love, give help, give service, give any little thing you can, but keep out barter. Make no conditions and none will be imposed on you. Let us give out of our own bounty, just as God gives to us.
In this external world, which is full of finite things, it is impossible to see and find the Infinite. The Infinite must be sought in that alone which is infinite, and the only thing infinite about us is that which is within us, our own soul. Neither the body, nor the mind, nor even our thoughts, nor the world we see around us, is infinite.
Is there any sex-distinction in the Atman (Self)? Out with the differentiation between man and woman—all is Atman! Give up the identification with the body, and stand up!
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.
It is feeling that is the life, the strength, the vitality, without which no amount of intellectual activity can reach God.
It is only by doing good to others that one attains to one's own good.
It is only work that is done as a free-will offering to humanity and to nature that does not bring with it any binding attachment.
It is only work that is done as freewill offering to humanity and to nature that does not bring with it any binding attachment.
It is the cheerful mind that is persevering. It is the strong mind that hews its way through a thousand difficulties.
It is the patient building of character, the intense struggle to realize the truth, which alone will tell in the future of humanity.
Jnana teaches that the world should be given up, but not on that account to be abandoned. To be in the world but not of it—is the true test of the sannyasin.
Karma is the eternal assertion of human freedom. If we can bring ourselves down by our karma, surely it is in our power to raise ourselves by our own karma.
Knowledge can only be got in one way, the way of experience; there is no other way to know.
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.
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. Do not repent, do not brood over past deeds. Be âzâd ("free").
Learning and wisdom are superfluities, the surface glitter merely, but it is the heart that is the seat of all power.
Learning and wisdom are superfluities, the surface glitter merely, but it is the heart that is the seat of all power. It is not in the brain but in the heart that the Atman, possessed of knowledge, power, and activity, has its seat.
Let each one of us pray day and night for the downtrodden millions who are held fast by poverty, priestcraft, and tyranny. Pray day and night for them. I care more to preach religion to them than to the high and the rich.
Let each one of us pray day and night for the downtrodden millions, who are held fast by poverty, priestcraft, and tyranny. Pray day and night for them. I care more to preach religion to them than to the high and the rich. I am no metaphysician, no philosopher, nay, no saint. But I am poor and I love the poor.
Let the mind be cheerful but calm. Never let it run into excesses, because every excess will be followed by a reaction.
Let the mind be cheerful but calm. Never let it run into excesses, because every excess will be followed by a reaction.
Let us make our hearts as big as an ocean, to go beyond all the trifles of the world and see it only as a picture. We can then enjoy the world without being in any way affected by it.
Let us not depend upon the world for pleasure.
Let us put forth all our energies to acquire that which never fails—our spiritual perfection. If we have true yearning for realization, we must struggle, and through struggle growth will come. We shall make mistakes, but they may be angels unawares.
Let us worship the spirit in spirit, standing on spirit. Let the foundation be spirit, the middle spirit, the culmination spirit.
Live for an ideal, and that one ideal alone. Let it be so great, so strong, that there may be nothing else left in the mind; no place for anything else, no time for anything else.
Live for an ideal, and that one ideal alone. Let it be so great, so strong, that there may be nothing else left in the mind; no place for anything else, no time for anything else.
Look here--we shall die! Bear this in mind always, and then the spirit within will wake up. Only then will meanness vanish from you, practicality in work will come, you will get new vigor in mind and body, and those who come in contact with you will also feel that they have really got something uplifting from you.
Look here—we shall die! Bear this in mind always, and then the spirit within will wake up. Then meanness will vanish from you, practicality in work will come, you will get new vigor in mind and body, and those who come in contact with you will also feel that they have really got something uplifting from you.
Look upon every man, woman, and everyone as God. You cannot help anyone, you can only serve: serve the children of the Lord, serve the Lord Himself, if you have the privilege.
Love is always mutual and reflective. You may hate me, and if I want to love you, you repulse me. But if I persist, in a month or a year you are bound to love me. It is a well-known psychological phenomenon.
Many of us get many messages in our lives, or think we get them. As long as the message is regarding our own selves, go on doing what you please. But when it is in regard to our contact with and behavior to others, think a hundred times before you act upon it—and then you will be safe.
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.
Meditation means the mind is turned back upon itself. The mind stops all the thought-waves and the world stops. Your consciousness expands. Every time you meditate you will keep your growth.
Meditation means the mind is turned back upon itself. The mind stops all the thought-waves and the world stops. Your consciousness expands. Every time you meditate, you will keep your growth.
Mind you, this is life's experience: if you really want the good of others, the whole universe may stand against you and cannot hurt you. It must crumble before your power of the Lord Himself in you if you are sincere and really unselfish.
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.
My name should not be made prominent. It is my ideas that I want to see realized. The disciples of all the prophets have always inextricably mixed up the ideas of the Master with person, and at last killed the ideas for the person. The disciples of Sri Ramakrishna must guard against doing the same thing. Work for the idea, not the person.
Nature grinds all of us. Keep count of the ounce of pleasure you get. In the long run, nature did her work through you, and when you die your body will make other plants grow. Yet we think all the time that we are getting pleasure ourselves. Thus the wheel goes round.
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.
Neither seek nor avoid; take what comes. It is liberty to be affected by nothing. Do not merely endure; be unattached.
No authority can save us, no beliefs. If there is a God, all can find Him. No one needs to be told it is warm; all can discover it for themselves. So it should be with God. He should be a fact in the consciousness of every person.
No one should be judged by their defects. The great virtues a person has are his or her especially. But their errors are the common weakness of humanity and should never be counted in estimating a person’s character.
No one should be judged by their defects. The virtues a person has are his especially; his errors are the common weaknesses of humanity and should never be counted in estimating his character.
Not even the deepest sleep will give you such a rest as meditation can. The mind goes on jumping even in deepest sleep. Just those few moments in meditation your brain has almost stopped. … You forget the body. … You feel such pleasure in it. You become so light. This perfect rest we will get in meditation.
Oh, to live even for a day in the full light of freedom, to breathe the free air of simplicity! Isn’t that the highest purity?
Oh, to live even for a day in the full light of freedom, to breathe the free air of simplicity! Isn’t that the highest purity?
One who leans on others cannot serve the God of Truth.
Our first duty is not to hate ourselves, because to advance we must have faith in ourselves first and then in God. Those who have no faith in themselves can never have faith in God.
Our supreme duty is to advance toward freedom—physical, mental, and spiritual—and help others to do so.
Out of purity and silence comes the word of power.
Perfection does not come from belief or faith. Talk does not count for anything. Parrots can do that. Perfection comes through selfless work.
Perfection is always infinite. We are the Infinite already. You and I, and all beings, are trying to manifest that infinity.
Please everyone without becoming a hypocrite or a coward.
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.
Pray all the time, read all the scriptures in the world, and worship all the gods there are … [but] unless you realize the Self (atman), there is no freedom.
Purity, patience, and perseverance are the three essentials to success and, above all, love.
Put God behind everything—human beings, animals, food, and work. Make this a habit.
Put God behind everything—people, animals, food, work. Make this a habit.
Realize your true nature. That is all there is to do. Know yourself as you are—infinite spirit. That is practical religion. Everything else is impractical, for everything else will perish.
Realize yourself. That is all there is to do. Know yourself as you are—infinite spirit. That is practical religion. Everything else is impractical, for everything else will vanish.
Religion as a science, as a study, is the greatest and healthiest exercise that the human mind can have.
Religion has no business to formulate social laws and insist on the difference between beings, because its aim and end is to obliterate all such fictions and monstrosities.
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 the background of all religious thought wherever it be, and you will always find that as this idea of renunciation lessens, the more will the senses creep into the field of religion, and spirituality will decrease in the same ratio.
Renunciation is the very basis of our true life. Every moment of goodness and real life that we enjoy is when we do not think of ourselves.
Say "So'ham, So'ham" whatever comes. Tell yourself this even in eating, walking, suffering. Tell the mind this incessantly—that what we see never existed, that there is only "I". Flash--the dream will break! Think day and night, this universe is zero, only God is. Have intense desire to get free.
Self-realization is to be attained by renunciation, by meditation—renunciation of all the senses, cutting the knots, the chains that bind us down to matter.
So long as millions live in hunger and ignorance, I hold every person a traitor who, having been educated at their expense, pays not the least heed to them.
So long as the millions live in hunger and ignorance, I hold every person a traitor who, having been educated at their expense, pays not the least heed to them!
So long as there is desire or want, it is a sure sign that there is imperfection. A perfect, free being cannot have any desire.
Soft-brained people, weak-minded, chicken-hearted, cannot find the truth. One has to be free, and as broad as the sky.
Some people are so afraid of losing their individuality. Wouldn’t it be better for the pig to lose his pig-individuality if he can become God? Yes. But the poor pig does not think so at the time. Which state is my individuality? When I was a baby sprawling on the floor trying to swallow my thumb? Was that the individuality I should be sorry to lose? Fifty years hence I shall look upon this present state and laugh, just as I now look upon the baby state. Which of these individualities shall I keep?
Stand as a rock; you are indestructible. You are the Self (atman), the God of the universe.
Stand as a rock; you are indestructible. You are the Self, the God of the universe.
Stand up, be bold, and take the blame on your own shoulders. Do not go about throwing mud at others; for all the faults you suffer from, you are the sole and only cause.
Stand up, be bold, and take the blame on your own shoulders. Do not go about throwing mud at others; for all the faults you suffer from, you are the sole and only cause.
Stand up, be bold, be strong. Take the whole responsibility on your own shoulders, and know that you are the creator of your own destiny. All the strength and succor you want is within yourselves. Therefore, make your own future.
Stand upon the Atman, then only can we truly love the world. Take a very, very high stand; knowing our universal nature, we must look with perfect calmness upon all the panorama of the world.
Stand upon the Self, only then can we truly love the world. Take a very high stand; knowing our universal nature, we must look with perfect calmness upon all the panorama of the world.
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!
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.
Strength is life, weakness is death. Strength is felicity, life eternal, immortal. Weakness is constant strain and misery; weakness is death.
Strength is the sign of vigor, the sign of life, the sign of hope, the sign of health, and the sign of everything that is good. As long as the body lives, there must be strength in the body, strength in the mind, strength in the hand.
Superstition is our great enemy, but bigotry is worse.
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, and this is the way great spiritual giants are produced. Others are mere talking machines.
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, and this is the way great spiritual giants are produced. Others are mere talking machines.
Tell the truth boldly, whether it hurts or not. Never pander to weakness. If truth is too much for intelligent people and sweeps them away, let them go; the sooner the better.
Thank God for giving you this world as a moral gymnasium to help your development, but never imagine you can help the world.
That which is nearest is least observed. The Atman is the nearest of the near, therefore a careless and unsteady mind gets no clue to the Atman. But one who is alert, calm, self-restrained, and discriminating, ignores the external world and, diving more and more into the inner world, realizes the glory of the Atman and becomes great.
That which is nearest is least observed. The Atman is the nearest of the near, therefore the careless and the unsteady mind gets no clue to it. But the person who is alert, calm, self-restrained, and discriminating ignores the external world and, diving more and more into the inner world, realizes the glory of the Atman and becomes great.
The animal has its happiness in the senses, the human beings in their intellect, and the gods in spiritual contemplation. It is only to the soul that has attained to this contemplative state that the world really becomes beautiful.
The Atman alone is eternal. Hospitals will tumble down. Railroad givers will all die. This earth will be blown to pieces, suns wiped out. The Atman endures for ever.
The book one must read to learn natural sciences is the book of nature. The book from which to learn religion is your own mind and heart.
The correct meaning of the statement "The Vedas are beginningless and eternal" is that the law or truth revealed by them is permanent and changeless.
The correct meaning of the statement “The Vedas are beginningless and eternal” is that the law or truth revealed by them is permanent and changeless.
The disciple must have great power of endurance. Bear all evil and misery without one thought of unhappiness, resistance, remedy, or retaliation. That is true endurance, and that you must acquire.
The disciple must have great power of endurance. Life seems comfortable; and you find the mind behaves well when everything is going well with you. But if something goes wrong, your mind loses its balance. That is not good. Bear all evil and misery without one murmur of hurt, without one thought of unhappiness, resistance, remedy, or retaliation. That is true endurance; and that you must acquire.
The essence of Vedanta is that there is but one Being and that every soul is that Being in full, not a part of that Being.
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.
The first sign that you are becoming religious is that you are becoming cheerful.
The great secret of true success, of true happiness, is this: the man or woman who asks for no return, the perfectly unselfish person, is the most successful.
The greatest help to spiritual life is meditation. In meditation we divest ourselves of all material conditions and feel our divine nature. We do not depend upon any external help in meditation.
The greatest help to spiritual life is meditation. In meditation we divest ourselves of all material conditions and feel our divine nature. We do not depend upon any external help in meditation. The touch of the soul can paint the brightest color even in the dingiest places; it can cast a fragrance over the vilest thing; it can make the wicked divine--and all enmity, all selfishness is effaced.
The greatest religion is to be true to your own nature. Have faith in yourselves! If you do not exist, how can God exist, or anybody else?
The greatest religion is to be true to your own nature. Have faith in yourselves! If you do not exist, how can God or anybody else exist?
The greatest sin is to think that you are weak. No one is greater: realize that you are Brahman. Nothing has power except what you give it.
The highest manifestation of strength is to keep ourselves calm and on our own feet.
The highest manifestation of strength is to keep ourselves calm and on our own feet.
The human soul has sojourned in lower and higher forms, migrating from one to another according to the samskaras or impressions, but it is only in the highest form as a human being that it attains to freedom.
The idea of perfect womanhood is perfect independence.
The important thing is how much less you think of the body, of yourself as matter—as dead, dull, insentient matter; how much more you think of yourself as shining immortal being. The more you think of yourself as spirit, the more eager you will be to be absolutely free from matter, body and senses. This is the intense desire to be free.
The important thing is: how much less you think of the body, of yourself as matter—as dead, dull, insentient matter; how much more you think of yourself as shining immortal being.
The important thing is: how much less you think of the body, of yourself as matter--as dead, dull, insentient matter; how much more you think of yourself as shining immortal being. The more you think of yourself as shining immortal spirit, the more eager you will be to be absolutely free of matter, body and senses. This is the intense desire to be free.
The Kingdom of Heaven is within us. God is within us. He is the Soul of our souls. See Him in your own soul. That is practical religion. That is freedom.
The Kingdom of Heaven is within us. He is there. He is the soul of our souls. See Him in your own soul. That is practical religion. That is freedom
The less passion there is, the better we work. The calmer we are, the better for us and the more the amount of work we can do. When we let loose our feelings, we waste so much energy, shatter our nerves, disturb our minds, and accomplish very little work.

The less the thought of the body, the better it is for us. For it is the body that drags us down. It is attachment, identification, which makes us miserable.
The less the thought of the body, the better it is. For it is the body that drags us down. It is attachment, identification which makes us miserable. That is the secret: to think that I am the spirit and not the body, and that the whole of this universe with all its relations, with all its good and all its evil, is but as a series of paintings--scenes on a canvas--of which I am the witness.
The meditative state is the highest state of existence. So long as there is desire, no real happiness can come. It is only the contemplative, witness-like study of objects that brings to us real enjoyment and happiness.
The mind is but the subtle part of the body. You must retain great strength in your mind and words.
The mistake is that we cling to the body when it is the spirit that is really immortal.
The mistake is that we cling to the body when it is the spirit that is really immortal.
The moment you fear, you are nobody. It is fear that is the great cause of misery in the world. It is fear that is the greatest of all superstitions. It is the fear that is the cause of our woes, and it is fearlessness that brings heaven in a moment.
The moment you fear, you are nobody. It is fear that is the greatest cause of misery in the world. It is fear that is the greatest of all superstitions. It is fear that is the cause of our woes, and it is fearlessness that brings heaven in a moment.
The more we grow in love and virtue and holiness, the more we see love and virtue and holiness outside. All condemnation of others really condemns ourselves. Adjust the microcosm (which is in your power to do) and the macrocosm will adjust itself for you.

The more we grow in love and virtue and holiness, the more we see love and virtue and holiness outside. All condemnation of others really condemns ourselves. Adjust the microcosm (which is in your power to do) and the macrocosm will adjust itself for you. It is like the hydrostatic paradox, one drop of water can balance the universe.
The more you think of yourself as shining immortal spirit, the more eager you will be to be absolutely free of matter, body, and senses. This is the intense desire to be free.
The nature of the brute is to remain where he is, of a human being to seek good and to avoid evil, and of God to neither seek nor avoid but just to be eternally blissful. Let us be Gods, let us make our hearts like an ocean, to go beyond all the trifles of the world and see it only as a picture. We can then enjoy it without being in any way affected by it.
The nature of the brutes is to remain where they are, of human beings to seek good and avoid evil, and of God to neither seek nor avoid but just to be blissful eternally. Let us be like God.
The nearer we are to God, the less we will have occasions to cry or weep. The further we are from God, the more will long faces come. The more we know God, the more misery vanishes.
The one eternal religion is applied to the opinions of various minds and various races. There never was my religion or yours, my national religion or your national religion; there never existed many religions, there is only the one. One infinite religion existed all through eternity and will ever exist, and this religion is expressing itself in various countries in various ways.
The past was great no doubt, but I sincerely believe that the future will be more glorious still.
The power is with the silent ones, who only live and love and then withdraw their personality. They never say “me” and “mine”; they are only blessed in being instruments.
The power of purity—it is a definite power.
The powers of the mind should be concentrated and the mind turned back upon itself; as the darkest places reveal their secrets before the penetrating rays of the sun, so will the concentrated mind penetrate its own innermost secrets.
The sages are often ignorant of physical science, because they read the wrong book—the book within; and the scientists are too often ignorant of religion, because they too read the wrong book—the book outside.
The secret of life is not enjoyment but education through experience.
The Self when it appears behind the universe is called God. The same Self when it appears behind this little universe—the body—is the soul.
The Soul is not composed of any materials. It is unity indivisible. Therefore it must be indestructible.
The varieties of religious belief are an advantage, since all faiths are good, so far as they encourage us to lead a religious life. The more sects there are, the more opportunities there are for making a successful appeal to the divine instinct in all of us.
The weak have no place here, in this life or any other life. Weakness leads to slavery. Weakness leads to all kinds of misery, physical and mental. Weakness is death.
The weak have no place here, in this life or in any other life. Weakness leads to slavery. Weakness leads to all kinds of misery, physical and mental. Weakness is death.
The weak, the fearful, the ignorant will never reach the Atman. You cannot undo what you have done; the effect must come. Face it, but be careful never to do the same thing again. Give up the burden of all deeds to God. Give all, both good and bad. God helps those who do not help themselves.
The weak, the fearful, the ignorant will never reach the Atman. You cannot undo, the effect must come, face it, but be careful never to do the same thing again. Give up the burden of all deeds to the Lord. Give all, both good and bad. Do not keep the good and give only the bad. God helps those who do not help themselves.
The whole secret of existence is to have no fear. Never fear what will become of you, depend on no one. Only the moment you reject all help are you free.
The whole universe is one in the Atman. That Atman when it appears behind the universe is called God. The same Atman when it appears behind this little universe, the body, is the soul. This very soul, therefore, is the Atman in us.
The whole universe is one. There is only one Self in the universe, only One Existence, and that One Existence, when it passes through the forms of time, space, causation, is called by different names, buddhi, fine matter, gross matter, all mental and physical forms. Everything in the universe is that One, appearing in various forms. When a little part of it comes, as it were, into this network of time, space and causation, it takes forms. Take off the network, and it is all one.
The whole universe is one. There is only one Self in the universe, only One Existence.
The will is stronger than anything else. Everything must go down before the will, for it comes from God. A pure and strong will is omnipotent.
The wind of divine grace is always blowing. You just need to spread your sail. Whenever you do anything, do it with your whole heart concentrated on it. Think day and night, “I am of the essence of that Supreme Being-Consciousness-Bliss. What fear and anxiety have I?”
The wind of divine grace is blowing on for ever and ever. Do you spread your sail. Whenever you do anything, do it with your whole heart concentrated on it.
The world is ready to give up its secrets if we only know how to knock, how to give it the necessary blow. The strength and force of the blow come through concentration.
There are hundreds of thousands of microbes surrounding us, but they cannot harm us unless we become weak, until the body is ready and predisposed to receive them. There may be a million microbes of misery floating about us. Never mind! They dare not approach us, they have no power to get a hold on us, until the mind is weakened. This is the great fact: strength is life. Weakness is death. Strength is felicity, life eternal, immortal. Weakness is constant strain and misery: weakness is death
There cannot be friendship without equality.
There is hope for all. None can die; none can be degraded forever. Life is but a playground, however gross the play may be. However we may receive blows, and however knocked about we may be, the Atman is there and is never injured. We are that Infinite.
There is no help for you outside of yourself; you are the creator of the universe. Like the silkworm you have built a cocoon around yourself…. Burst your own cocoon and come out aw the beautiful butterfly, as the free soul. Then alone you will see Truth.
There is one thing to be remembered: that the assertion--I am God--cannot be made with regard to the sense-world.
There is one thing to be remembered: that the assertion—I am God—cannot be made with regard to the sense-world.
There is only one sin and it is: weakness. When I was a boy, I read Milton’s Paradise Lost. The only good man I had any respect for was Satan. The only saint is that person who never weakens, faces everything, and determines die game.
There is only one sin. That is weakness.... The only saint is that soul that never weakens, faces everything, and determines to die game.
There is only one sin—and that sin is weakness. When I was a boy, I read Milton’s Paradise Lost. The only good man I had any respect for was Satan. The only saint is the soul who never weakens, faces everything, and determines to die game.
There is to be found in every religion the manifestation of the struggle toward freedom. It is the groundwork of all morality, of unselfishness, which means getting rid of the idea that human beings are the same as this little body.
They alone live whose lives are in the whole universe, and the more we concentrate our lives on limited things, the faster we go towards death. Those moments alone we live when our lives are in the universe, in others; and living this little life is death, simply death, and that is why the fear of death comes.
They alone live whose lives are in the whole universe. The more we concentrate our lives in limited things, the faster we go towards death. Those moments alone we live when our lives are in the universe, in others; and living this little life is death, simply death, and that is why the fear of death comes.
Think always, “I am ever-pure, ever-knowing, and ever-free. How I can do anything evil? Can I ever be fooled like ordinary people with the insignificant charms of lust and wealth?” Strengthen the mind with such thoughts. This will surely bring real good.
Think always: "I am ever-pure, ever-knowing, and ever-free. How can I do anything evil? Can I ever be befooled like ordinary people with the insignificant charms of lust and wealth?" Strengthen the mind with such thoughts. This will surely bring real good.
Think day and night, "I am of the essence of that Supreme Existence, Knowledge, Bliss--what fear and anxiety have I? This body, mind, and intellect are all transient, and That which is beyond these is myself."
This earth is higher than all the heavens; this is the greatest school in the universe.
This I have seen in life—those who are overcautious about themselves fall into dangers at every step; those who are afraid of losing honor and respect, get only disgrace; and those who are always afraid of loss, always lose.
This is no world. It is God Himself. In delusion we call it world.
This is the first lesson to learn: be determined not to curse anything outside, not to lay the blame upon anyone outside, but stand up, lay the blame on yourself. You will find that is always true. Get hold of yourself.
This is the great lesson that we are here to learn through myriads of births and heavens and hells—that there is nothing to be asked for, desired for, beyond one’s spiritual Self (atman).
This is the secret of spiritual life: to think that I am the Atman and not the body, and that the whole of this universe with all its relations, with all its good and all its evil, is but as a series of paintings—scenes on a canvas—of which I am the witness.
This life is a hard fact; work your way through it boldly, though it may be adamantine; no matter, the soul is stronger.
This little separate self must die. Then we shall find that we are in the Real, and that Reality is God, and He is our own true nature, and He is always in us and with us. Let us live in Him and stand in Him. It is the only joyful state of existence. Life on the plane of the Spirit is the only life, and let us all try to attain to this realization.
This world is nothing. It is at best only a hideous caricature, a shadow of the Reality. We must go to the Real. Renunciation will take us to It. Renunciation is the very basis of our true life; every moment of goodness and real life that we enjoy is when we do not think of ourselves.
Those who die, merely suffering the woes of life like cats and dogs, are they human beings? The worthy are those who, even when agitated by the sharp interaction of pleasure and pain, are discriminating and, knowing them to be of an evanescent nature, become passionately devoted to the Atman. This is all the difference between human beings and animals.
Those who grumble at the little thing that has fallen to their lot to do will grumble at everything. Always grumbling they will lead a miserable life…. But those who do their duty putting their shoulder to the wheel will see the light, and higher and higher duties will fall to their share.
Those who grumble at the little thing that has fallen to their lot to do will grumble at everything. Always grumbling, they will lead a miserable life, and everything will be a failure. But those who do their duties as they go, putting their shoulders to the wheel, will see the light, and higher duties will fall to their share.
Those who have succeeded in attaching or detaching their minds at will have succeeded in Pratyahara, which means "gathering towards," checking the outgoing powers of the mind, freeing it from the thralldom of the senses. When we can do this, we shall really possess character; then alone we shall have taken a long step towards freedom. Before that, we are mere machines.
Those who work at a thing heart and soul not only achieve success in it but through their absorption in that they also realize the supreme truth—Brahman. Those who work at a thing with their whole heart receive help from God.
To believe blindly is to degenerate the human soul. Be an atheist if you want, but do not believe in anything unquestioningly.
To realize the spirit as spirit is practical religion. Everything else is good so far as it leads to this one grand idea. That realization is to be attained by renunciation, by meditation—renunciation of all the senses, cutting the knots, the chains that bind us down to matter.
To succeed you must have tremendous perseverance, tremendous will. “I will drink the ocean,” says the persevering soul, “at my will mountains will crumble.” Have that sort of energy, that sort of will, work hard, and you will reach the goal.
To succeed, you must have tremendous perseverance, tremendous will. "I will rink the ocean," says the persevering soul, "at my will mountains will crumble up." Have that sort of energy, that sort of will, work hard, and you will reach the goal.
To talk of evil and misery is nonsense, because they do not exist outside. If I am immune against all anger, I never feel angry. If I am proof against all hatred, I never feel hatred.
To the person who desires nothing and does not get entangled in desires, the manifold changes of nature are one panorama of beauty and sublimity.
Tremendous purity, tremendous renunciation, is the one secret of spirituality. "Neither through wealth, nor through progeny, but through renunciation alone is immortality to be reached," say the Vedas. "Sell all that thou hast and give to poor, and follow me," says the Christ. So all great saints and prophets have expressed it, and have carried it out in their lives. How can great spirituality come without renunciation? Renunciation is the background of all religious thought wherever it be, and you will always find that as this idea of renunciation lessens, the more will the senses creep into the field of religion, and spirituality will decrease in the same ratio.
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.
Truth does not pay homage to any society, ancient or modern. Society has to pay homage to Truth or die.
Truth, purity and unselfishness—wherever these are present, there is no power below or above the sun to crush the possessor thereof. Equipped with these, one individual is able to face the whole universe in opposition.
Truth, purity, and unselfishness—wherever these are present, there is no power below or above the sun to crush the possessor thereof. Equipped with these, one individual is able to face the whole universe in opposition.
Try a little harder, and meditation comes. You do not feel the body or anything else. When you come out of it after the hour, you have had the most beautiful rest you ever had in your life. That is the only way you ever give rest to your system. Not even the deepest sleep will give you such a rest as that.
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.
Wait with patience and love and strength. If helpers are not ready now, they will come in time. Why should we be in a hurry? The real working force of all great work is in its almost unperceived beginnings.
Watch people do their most common actions; these are indeed the things that will tell you the real character of a great person.
We are ever free if we would only believe it, only have faith enough. You are the soul, free and eternal, ever free, ever blessed. Have faith enough and you will be free in a minute.
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?
We believe that every being is divine, is God. Every soul is a sun covered over with clouds of ignorance; the difference between soul and soul is owing to the difference in density of these layers of clouds.
We believe that every being is divine, is God. Every soul is a sun covered over with clouds of ignorance; the difference between soul and soul is owing to the difference in density of these layers of clouds.
We came to enjoy; we are being enjoyed. We came to rule; we are being ruled. We came to work; we are being worked. All the time, we find that. And this comes into every detail of our life.
We can never lose what is really ours. Who can lose his being? Who can lose his very existence? If I am good, it is the existence first, and then that becomes colored with the quality of goodness. If I am evil, it is the existence first, and that becomes colored with the quality of badness. That existence is first, last, and always; it is never lost but ever present.
We cannot see outside what we are not inside. The universe is to us what the huge engine is to the miniature engine; and indication of any error in the tiny engine leads us to imagine trouble in the huge one.
We cannot see outside what we are not inside. The universe is to us what the huge engine is to the miniature engine; and indication of any error in the tiny engine leads us to imagine trouble in the huge one.
We get caught. How? Not by what we give but by what we expect. We get misery in return for our love: not from the fact that we love but from the fact that we want love in return. There is no misery where there is no want. Desire, want, is the father of all misery. Desires are bound by the laws of success and failure. Desires must bring misery.
We get caught. How? Not by what we give but by what we expect. We get misery in return for our love; not from the fact that we love, but from the fact that we want love in return. There is no misery where there is no want.
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?
We must approach religion with reverence and with love, and our heart will stand up and say, this is truth, and this is untruth.
We must be bright and cheerful. Long faces do not make religion. Religion should be the most joyful thing in the world, because it is the best.
We must have friendship for all; we must be merciful toward those that are in misery; when people are happy, we ought to be happy; and to the wicked we must be indifferent. These attitudes will make the mind peaceful.
We must plunge heart and soul and body into the work. And until we are ready to sacrifice everything else to one Idea and to one alone, we never, never will see the Light.
We reap what we sow. We are the makers of our own fate. None else has the blame, none has the praise.
We want to know in order to make ourselves free. That is our life: one universal cry for freedom.
What about this marvelous experience of standing alone, discarding all help, breasting the storms of life, of working without any sense of recompense, without any sense of putrid duty, and of working a whole life, joyful, free -- not goaded on to work like slaves by false human love or ambition?Nature grinds all of us. Keep count of the ounce of pleasure you get. In the long run, nature did her work through you, and when you die your body will make other plants grow. Yet we think all the time that we are getting pleasure ourselves. Thus the wheel goes round.
What do you gain in heaven? You become gods, drink nectar, and get rheumatism. There is less misery there than on earth, but also less truth.
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.
What is material and what is not material? When the world is the end and God the means to attain that end, then that is material. When God is the end and the world is only the means to attain that end, spirituality has begun.
What is material and what is not? When the world is the end and God is the means to attain that end, that is material. When God is the end and the world is only the means to attain that end, spirituality has begun.
What is the use of talking of one’s mistakes to the world? They cannot thereby be undone. For what one has done one must suffer; one must try and do better. The world sympathizes only with the strong and the powerful.
What is the world that is to be given up? It is here. I am carrying it all with me. My own body. It is all for this body that I put my hand voluntarily upon my fellow beings, just to keep it nice and give it a little pleasure; [all for this body] that I injure others and make mistakes.
What is the world that is to be given up? It is here. I am carrying it all with me. My own body. It is all for this body that I put my hand voluntarily upon my fellow human beings, just to keep it nice and give it a little pleasure. It is all for the body that I injure others and make mistakes.
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. Awake, awake, great souls! The world is burning in misery. Can you sleep?Work unto death--I am with you, and when I am gone, my spirit will work with you. This life comes and goes--wealth, fame, enjoyments are only of a few days. It is better, far better, to die on the field of duty, preaching the truth than to die like a worldly worm. Advance!
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. Aware, awake, great souls! The world is burning in misery. Can you sleep?
What the world wants today is twenty men and women who can dare to stand in the street yonder and say that they possess nothing but God. Who will go? Why should one fear? If this is true, what else could matter? If it is not true, what do our lives matter?
What the world wants today is twenty men and women who can dare to stand in the street yonder and say that they possess nothing but God. Who will go? Why should one fear? If this is true, what else could matter? If it is not true, what do our lives matter?
Whatever you believe, that you will be. If you believe yourselves to be sages, sages you will be tomorrow. There is nothing to obstruct you.
When once you consider an action, do not let anything dissuade you. Consult your heart, not others, and then follow its dictates.
When we can attach the mind to—or detach it from—the sense at our will, we shall really possess character. Then alone we shall have taken a long step towards freedom; before that, we are mere machines.
When we come to nonattachment, then we can understand the marvelous mystery of the universe: how it is intense activity and at the same time intense peace, how it is work every moment and rest every moment.
When we have become free, we need not go mad and throw up society and rush off to die in the forest or the cave; we shall remain where we were but we shall understand the whole thing. The same phenomena will remain but with a new meaning.
When we have become free, we need not go mad and throw up society and rush off to die in the forest or the cave; we shall remain where we were, only we shall understand the whole thing.
Whenever we attain a higher vision, the lower vision disappears of itself.
Where God is, there is no other. Where the world is, there is no God. These two will never unite. Like light and darkness. That is what I have understood from Christianity and the life of Jesus. Isn’t that also Buddhism? Isn’t that Hinduism? Isn’t that Islam? Isn’t that the teaching of all the great sages and teachers?
Where God is, there is no other. Where world is, there is no God. These two will never unite. Like light and darkness.
Who makes us ignorant? We ourselves. We put our hands over our eyes and weep that it is dark.
Who will bring light to the poor? Who will travel from door to door bringing education to them? Let these people be your God—think of them, work for them, pray for them incessantly. The Lord will show you the way.
Whose meditation is real and effective? Who can really surrender to the will of God? Only the person whose mind has been purified by selfless work.
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.
Woman has suffered for eons, and that has given her infinite patience and infinite perseverance.
Women will work out their destinies—much better, too, than men can ever do for them. All the mischief to women has come because men undertook to shape the destiny of women.
Work a little harder at meditation and it comes. You do not feel the body or anything else. When you come out of it after the hour, you have had the most beautiful rest you ever had in your life. That is the only way you ever give rest to your system.
Work and worship are necessary to take away the veil, to lift off the bondage and illusion.
Work on with the intrepidity of a lion but at the same time with the tenderness of a flower.
Work unto death—I am with you, and when I am gone, my spirit will work with you. This life comes and goes—wealth, fame, enjoyments are only of a few days. It is better, far better, to die on the field of duty, preaching the truth, than to die like a worldly worm. Advance!
Worship of society and popular opinions is idolatry. The soul has no sex, no country, no place, no time.
You cannot believe in God until you believe in yourself.
You must avoid excessive merriment. A mind in that state never becomes calm; it becomes fickle. Excessive merriment will always be followed by sorrow. Tears and laughter are near kin. People so often run from one extreme to the other.
You, as body, mind, or soul, are a dream, but what you really are, is Being, Consciousness, Bliss. You are the God of this universe. You are creating the whole universe and drawing it in.
Your Atman is the support of the universe—whose support do you stand in need of? Wait with patience and love and strength. If helpers are not ready now, they will come in time. Why should we be in a hurry? The real working force of all great work is in its almost unperceived beginnings.
It is better to do something than to stand still.
Old rituals must be rejected and new ones substituted.

Traveling is the best thing in life.

If you are poor, work. If you are rich, work. If you are burdened with un-seemingly unfair responsibilities, work. If disappointments come, work. If sorrow overwhelms you and loved ones seem not true, work. If health is threatened, work. When dreams are shattered and hope seems dead, work. Work as if your life is in peril. It’s really is. No matter what ails you, work. Work faithfully. Work in faith. Work is the great remedy available for both mental and physical afflictions.
Neither money pays, nor name, nor fame, nor learning it is character that can cleave through adamantine walls of difficulties.
Ask nothing, want nothing in return. Give what you have to give: it will come back to you, but do not think of that now, it will come back multiplied by thousand fold: but the attention must not be on that. Yet have the power to give, give and there it ends. Ask, therefore, nothing in return: but the more you give, the more will come to you.
Whenever there is conflict between the heart and the mind, let the heart be followed.
Reserve unto yourself the power of detaching yourself from everything, how much the soul might yearn for it: however great the pangs of misery you feel if you were going to leave it, still reserve the power of leaving it whenever you want.
Practise truthfulness. Twelve years of absolute truthfulness in thought, word and deed gives a man what he wills.
The best thing to give your enemy is forgiveness, to an opponent tolerance, to a friend your heart, to your child a good, to a father difference, to your mother conduct that will make her proud of you, to yourself respect and to all men charity.
Help if you can. If you can not, fold your hands and stand by and see things go on. Do not injure, if you can not render help.
Stand up, Be Bold, Be Strong. Take the whole responsibility on your own shoulders, and know that you are the creator of your own destiny.
Do not be frightened. Awake, be up and doing. Do not stop till you have reached the goal.
Your country requires Heroes; Be Heroes! Your duty is to go on working, and then every thing will follow of itself.
Arise, Awake and Stop Not till the Goal is reached.
Brave, bold men, these are what we want. What we want is vigour in blood, strength in the nerves, iron muscles and nerves of steel, not softening namby-pamby ideas. Avoid all mystery. There is no mystery in religion. Mystery mongering and superstition are always signs of weakness.
Blessed are they whose bodies get destroyed in the service of others.
Three things are necessary to make every man great, every nation great:

1). Conviction of the power of goodness

2). Absence of jealousy and suspicion

3). Helping all who are trying to be and do good.
Religion is the manifestation of the divinity already in man.
Any attempt to modernize our women, if it tries to take our women away from that ideal of Sita, is immediate failure, as we see everyday. The women of India must grow and develop in the footprints of Sita, and that is the only way.
Along with other things, our women should acquire the spirit of valour and heroism. In the present day, it has become necessary for them also to learn self defence. See, how grand was the Queen of Jhansi!
Religions of the world have become lifeless mockeries. What the world wants is character.
Be not afraid of anything. You will do marvelous work. The moment you fear, you are nobody. It is fear that is the great cause of misery in the world. It is fear that is the greatest of all superstitions. It is fear that is the cause of our woes, and it is fearlessness that brings heaven even in a moment. Therefore, 'Arise, awake, and stop not till the goal is reached'.
What makes you weep my friend? In you is all power. Summon up your all-powerful nature. O mighty one, and this is whole universe will lie at your feet. It is the self alone that predominates and not matter.
Faith, faith, faith in ourselves, faith, faith in God - this is the secret of greatness. If you have faith in all the three hundred and thirty millions of your mythological gods, and in all the gods which foreigners have now and again introduced into your midst, and still have no faith in yourselves, there is no salvation for you.
This life is short, the vanities of the world are transient, but they alone live who live for others, the rest are more dead than alive.
If you really want to judge the character of a man, look not at his great performances. Every fool may become a hero at one time or another. Watch a man do his most common actions; those are indeed the things which will tell you real character of a great man.
If a man with an ideal makes a thousand mistakes, I am sure that the man without an ideal makes fifty thousand. Therefore, it is better to have an ideal.
Are you unselfish? That is the question. If you are, you will be perfect without reading a single religious book, without going into a single church or temple.
My children, the secret of religion lies not in theories but in practice. To be good and to do good - that is the whole of religion.
Religion is the manifestation of Divinity already in man.
Religion of the world have become lifeless mockeries. What the world wants is character.
All power is within you; you can do anything and everything. Believe in that, do not believe that you are weak; Stand up and express the divinity within you.

Who are you to solve women's problems? Are you the lord God that you should rule over every widow and every woman? Hands off! They will solve their own problems.

Each soul is potentially divine. The goal is to manifest this divinity within, by controlling nature, external and internal. Do this either by work, or worship, or psychic control, or philosophy - by one, or more, or all of these - and be free. This is the whole of religion. Doctrines, or dogmas, or rituals, or books, or temples, or forms, are but secondary details.
The whole universe is one. There is only one Self in the universe, only One Existence.
You cannot believe in God until you believe in yourself.
In a day when you don't come across any problems - you can be sure that you are traveling in the wrong path.
Bad customs and laws are ignored by the virtuous, and unwritten but mightier laws of love, sympathy, and integrity take their place. Happy is the nation which can rise to the necessity of but few law books, and needs no longer to bother its head about this or that institution. Good people rise beyond all laws, and they help others to rise under whatever conditions they live.
Each individual has to work out his or her own salvation; there is no other way. So also with nations. Again, the great institutions of every nation are the conditions of its very existence and cannot be transformed by the mould of any other race. Until higher institutions have been evolved, any attempt to break the old ones will be disastrous. Growth is always gradual.

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………………they were content only to give a mental assent to the customs of their forefathers, and wanted others to do the same.
Arise, Awake and Stop not till the Goal is Reached.
Let positive, strong, helpful thoughts enter into your brains from very childhood. Lay yourselves open to these thoughts, and not to weakening and paralysing ones.
The power is with the silent ones, who only live and love and then withdraw their personality. They never say “me” and “mine”; they are only blessed in being instruments. Such men are the makers of Christ and Buddhas, ever living, fully identified with God. Ideal existences asking nothing and not consciously doing anything. They are the real movers, the jivan-muktas, absolutely selfless, the little personality entirely blown away, ambition non-existent. They are all principles, no personality.
Say, ‘This misery that I am suffering is of my own doing, and that very thing proves that it will have to be undone by me alone.’ That which I created, I can demolish; that which is created by someone else, I shall never be able to destroy. Therefore, stand up, be bold, be strong. Take the whole responsibility on your own shoulders, and know that you are the creators of your own destiny. All the strength and succour you want is within ourselves.
We must overcome difficulty by constant practice. We must learn that nothing can happen to us unless we make ourselves susceptible to it.
Give me few men and women who are pure and selfless and I shall shake the world
Strength is Life, Weakness is death
Condemn none: if you can stretch out a helping hand, do so. If you cannot, fold your hands, bless your brothers, and let them go their own way.
This life is short, the vanities of the world are transient, but they alone live who live for others. The rest are more dead than alive.
You cannot believe in God until you believe in yourself.
When we really begin to live in the world, then we understand what is meant by brotherhood or mankind, and not before.
External nature is only internal nature writ large.
The world is the great gymnasium where we come to make ourselves strong.
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.
The will is not free - it is a phenomenon bound by cause and effect - but there is something behind the will which is free.
The more we come out and do good to others, the more our hearts will be purified, and God will be in them.
There is nothing beyond God, and the sense enjoyments are simply something through which we are passing now in the hope of getting better things.
The moment I have realized God sitting in the temple of every human body, the moment I stand in reverence before every human being and see God in him -- that moment I am free from bondage, everything that binds vanishes, and I am free.
Our duty is to encourage every one in his struggle to live up to his own highest idea, and strive at the same time to make the ideal as near as possible to the Truth.
That man has reached immortality who is disturbed by nothing material.
You have to grow from the inside out. None can teach you, none can make you spiritual. There is no other teacher but your own soul.
The goal of mankind is knowledge. . . . Now this knowledge is inherent in man. No knowledge comes from outside: it is all inside. What we say a man "knows," should, in strict psychological language, be what he "discovers" or "unveils"; what man "learns" is really what he discovers by taking the cover off his own soul, which is a mine of infinite knowledge.
If money help a man to do good to others, it is of some value; but if not, it is simply a mass of evil, and the sooner it is got rid of, the better.
All differences in this world are of degree, and not of kind, because oneness is the secret of everything.
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.
The greatest religion is to be true to your own nature. Have faith in yourselves!
The spirit is the cause of all our thoughts and body-action, and everything, but it is untouched by good or evil, pleasure or pain, heat or cold, and all the dualism of nature, although it lends its light to everything.
It is our own mental attitude which makes the world what it is for us. Our thought make things beautiful, our thoughts make things ugly. The whole world is in our own minds. Learn to see things in the proper light. First, believe in this world -- that there is meaning behind everything. Everything in the world is good, is holy and beautiful. If you see something evil, think that you are not understanding it in the right light. Throw the burden on yourselves!
In one word, this ideal is that you are divine.
All the powers in the universe are already ours. It is we who have put our hands before our eyes and cry that it is dark.
If faith in ourselves had been more extensively taught and practiced, I am sure a very large portion of the evils and miseries that we have would have vanished.
Where can we go to find God if we cannot see Him in our own hearts and in every living being.
The Vedanta teaches that Nirvana can be attained here and now, that we do not have to wait for death to reach it. Nirvana is the realization of the Self; and after having once known that, if only for an instant, never again can one be deluded by the mirage of personality.
The Vedanta recognizes no sin it only recognizes error. And the greatest error, says the Vedanta is to say that you are weak, that you are a sinner, a miserable creature, and that you have no power and you cannot do this and that.
Never think there is anything impossible for the soul. It is the greatest heresy to think so. If there is sin, this is the only sin — to say that you are weak, or others are weak.
Tell about your friends, I will tell about you.
Truth can be stated in a thousand different ways, yet each one can be true.
"I am the thread that runs through all these pearls," and each pearl is a religion or even a sect thereof. Such are the different pearls, and God is the thread that runs through all of them; most people, however, are entirely unconscious of it.
“Comfort” is no test of truth; on the contrary, truth is often far from being “comfortable.”
“Face the brutes.” That is a lesson for all life—face the terrible, face it boldly. Like the monkeys, the hardships of life fall back when we cease to flee before them.
A few heart-whole, sincere, and energetic men and women can do more in a year than a mob in a century.
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.
All is the Self or Brahman. The saint, the sinner, the lamb, the tiger, even the murderer, as far as they have any reality, can be nothing else, because there is nothing else.
All knowledge that the world has ever received comes from the mind; the infinite library of the universe is in our own mind.
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.
All truth is eternal. Truth is nobody’s property; no race, no individual can lay any exclusive claim to it. Truth is the nature of all souls.
All who have actually attained any real religious experience never wrangle over the form in which the different religions are expressed. They know that the soul of all religions is the same and so they have no quarrel with anybody just because he or she does not speak in the same tongue.
Anything that brings spiritual, mental, or physical weakness, touch it not with the toes of your feet.
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.
Are great things ever done smoothly? Time, patience, and indomitable will must show.
Are you unselfish? That is the question. If you are, you will be perfect without reading a single religious book, without going into a single church or temple.
As body, mind, or soul, you are a dream; you really are Being, Consciousness, Bliss (satchidananda). You are the God of this universe.
As long as we believe ourselves to be even the least different from God, fear remains with us; but when we know ourselves to be the One, fear goes; of what can we be afraid?
As soon as I think that I am a little body, I want to preserve it, to protect it, to keep it nice, at the expense of other bodies; then you and I become separate.
As soon as you know the voice and understand what it is, the whole scene changes. The same world which was the ghastly battlefield of maya is now changed into something good and beautiful.
Astrology and all these mystical things are generally signs of a weak mind; therefore as soon as they are becoming prominent in our minds, we should see a physician, take good food, and rest.
Be a hero. Always say, “I have no fear.” Tell this to everyone—“Have no fear.”
Be perfectly resigned, perfectly unconcerned; then alone can you do any true work. No eyes can see the real forces; we can only see the results. Put out self, forget it; just let God work, it is His business.
Blows are what awaken us and help to break the dream. They show us the insufficiency of this world and make us long to escape, to have freedom.
Both the forces of good and evil will keep the universe alive for us, until we awake from our dreams and give up this building of mud pies.
Come out into the broad light of day, come out from the little narrow paths, for how can the infinite soul rest content to live and die in small ruts?
Come out into the universe of Light. Everything in the universe is yours, stretch out your arms and embrace it with love. If you every felt you wanted to do that, you have felt God.
Delusion will vanish as the light becomes more and more effulgent, load after load of ignorance will vanish, and then will come a time when all else has disappeared and the sun alone shines.
Desire, ignorance, and inequality—this is the trinity of bondage.
Despondency is not religion, whatever else it may be.
Do any deserve liberty who are not ready to give it to others? Let us calmly go to work, instead of dissipating our energy in unnecessary fretting and fuming.
Do not look back upon what has been done. Go ahead!
Don't look back—forward, infinite energy, infinite enthusiasm, infinite daring, and infinite patience—then alone can great deeds be accomplished.
Each work has to pass through these stages—ridicule, opposition, and then acceptance. Those who think ahead of their time are sure to be misunderstood.
Even the greatest fool can accomplish a task if it were after his or her heart. But the intelligent ones are those who can convert every work into one that suits their taste.
Every action that helps us manifest our divine nature more and more is good; every action that retards it is evil.
Every individual is a center for the manifestation of a certain force. This force has been stored up as the resultant of our previous works, and each one of us is born with this force at our back.
Every step I take in light is mine forever.
Everything must be sacrificed, if necessary, for that one sentiment: universality.
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.
Fill the brain with high thoughts, highest ideals, place them day and night before you, and out of that will come great work.
First get rid of the delusion “I am the body,” then only will we want real knowledge.
First, believe in the world—that there is meaning behind everything.
Freedom can never be reached by the weak. Throw away all weakness. Tell your body that it is strong, tell your mind that it is strong, and have unbounded faith and hope in yourself.
Go on saying, “I am free.” Never mind if the next moment delusion comes and says, “I am bound.” Dehypnotize the whole thing.
God is merciful to those whom He sees struggling heart and soul for realization. But remain idle, without any struggle, and you will see that His grace will never come.
God is self-evident, impersonal, omniscient, the Knower and the Master of nature, the Lord of all. He is behind all worship and it is being done according to Him, whether we know it or not.
God is very merciful to those whom He sees struggling heart and soul for spiritual realization. But remain idle, without any struggle, and you will see that His grace will never come.
Great work requires great and persistent effort for a long time. … Character has to be established through a thousand stumbles.
Have you got the will to surmount mountain-high obstructions? If the whole world stands against you sword in hand, would you still dare to do what you think is right?
He whom the sages have been seeking in all these places is in our own hearts; the voice that you heard was right, says Vedanta, but the direction you gave to the voice was wrong.
Hold to the idea, “I am not the mind, I see that I am thinking, I am watching my mind act,” and each day the identification of yourself with thoughts and feelings will grow less, until at last you can entirely separate yourself from the mind and actually know it to be apart from yourself.
However we may receive blows, and however knocked about we may be, the Soul is there and is never injured. We are that Infinite.
I fervently wish no misery ever came near anyone; yet it is that alone that gives us an insight into the depths of our lives, does it not? In our moments of anguish, gates barred forever seem to open and let in many a flood of light.
I, for one, thoroughly believe that no power in the universe can withhold from anyone anything they really deserve.
If a piece of burning charcoal be placed on a man’s head, see how he struggles to throw it off. Similar will be the struggle for freedom of those who really understand that they are slaves of nature.
If superstition enters, the brain is gone.
If there is one word that you find coming out like a bomb from the Upanishads, bursting like a bombshell upon masses of ignorance, it is the word “fearlessness.”
If you think that you are bound, you remain bound; you make your own bondage. If you know that you are free, you are free this moment. This is knowledge, knowledge of freedom. Freedom is the goal of all nature.
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.
Impurity is a mere superimposition under which your real nature has become hidden. But the real you is already perfect, already strong.
Is there any sex-distinction in the Atman (Self)? Out with the differentiation between man and woman—all is Atman! Give up the identification with the body, and stand up!
It is feeling that is the life, the strength, the vitality, without which no amount of intellectual activity can reach God.
It is the cheerful mind that is persevering. It is the strong mind that hews its way through a thousand difficulties.
It is the patient building of character, the intense struggle to realize the truth, which alone will tell in the future of humanity.
Karma is the eternal assertion of human freedom. If we can bring ourselves down by our karma, surely it is in our power to raise ourselves by our own karma.
Knowledge can only be got in one way, the way of experience; there is no other way to know.
Learning and wisdom are superfluities, the surface glitter merely, but it is the heart that is the seat of all power.
Learning and wisdom are superfluities, the surface glitter merely, but it is the heart that is the seat of all power. It is not in the brain but in the heart that the Atman, possessed of knowledge, power, and activity, has its seat.
Let us not depend upon the world for pleasure.
Let us worship the spirit in spirit, standing on spirit. Let the foundation be spirit, the middle spirit, the culmination spirit.
Look upon every man, woman, and everyone as God. You cannot help anyone, you can only serve: serve the children of the Lord, serve the Lord Himself, if you have the privilege.
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.
Neither seek nor avoid; take what comes. It is liberty to be affected by nothing. Do not merely endure; be unattached.
No authority can save us, no beliefs. If there is a God, all can find Him. No one needs to be told it is warm; all can discover it for themselves. So it should be with God. He should be a fact in the consciousness of every person.
One who leans on others cannot serve the God of Truth.
Our first duty is not to hate ourselves, because to advance we must have faith in ourselves first and then in God. Those who have no faith in themselves can never have faith in God.
Our supreme duty is to advance toward freedom—physical, mental, and spiritual—and help others to do so.
Perfection does not come from belief or faith. Talk does not count for anything. Parrots can do that. Perfection comes through selfless work.
Perfection is always infinite. We are the Infinite already.You and I, and all beings, are trying to manifest that infinity.
Please everyone without becoming a hypocrite or a coward.
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.
Pray all the time, read all the scriptures in the world, and worship all the gods there are …[but] unless you realize the Self (atman), there is no freedom.
Purity, patience, and perseverance are the three essentials to success and, above all, love.
Religion as a science, as a study, is the greatest and healthiest exercise that the human mind can have.
Religion has no business to formulate social laws and insist on the difference between beings, because its aim and end is to obliterate all such fictions and monstrosities.
So long as there is desire or want, it is a sure sign that there is imperfection. A perfect, free being cannot have any desire.
Soft-brained people, weak-minded, chicken-hearted, cannot find the truth. One has to be free, and as broad as the sky.
Stand as a rock; you are indestructible. You are the Self (atman), the God of the universe.
Stand up, be bold, be strong. Take the whole responsibility on your own shoulders, and know that you are the creator of your own destiny. All the strength and succor you want is within yourself. Therefore make your own future.
Stand upon the Self, only then can we truly love the world. Take a very high stand; knowing our universal nature, we must look with perfect calmness upon all the panorama of the world.
Strength is the sign of vigor, the sign of life, the sign of hope, the sign of health, and the sign of everything that is good. As long as the body lives, there must be strength in the body, strength in the mind, strength in the hand.
Superstition is our great enemy, but bigotry is worse.
Tell the truth boldly, whether it hurts or not. Never pander to weakness. If truth is too much for intelligent people and sweeps them away, let them go; the sooner the better.
Thank God for giving you this world as a moral gymnasium to help your development, but never imagine you can help the world.
The essence of Vedanta is that there is but one Being and that every soul is that Being in full, not a part of that Being.
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.
The first sign that you are becoming religious is that you are becoming cheerful.
The greatest religion is to be true to your own nature. Have faith in yourselves!
The human soul has sojourned in lower and higher forms, migrating from one to another according to the samskaras or impressions, but it is only in the highest form as a human being that it attains to freedom.
The idea of perfect womanhood is perfect independence.
The important thing is: how much less you think of the body, of yourself as matter—as dead, dull, insentient matter; how much more you think of yourself as shining immortal being.
The less passion there is, the better we work. The calmer we are, the better for us and the more the amount of work we can do. When we let loose our feelings, we waste so much energy, shatter our nerves, disturb our minds, and accomplish very little work.
The mind is but the subtle part of the body. You must retain great strength in your mind and words.
The mistake is that we cling to the body when it is the spirit that is really immortal.
The more you think of yourself as shining immortal spirit, the more eager you will be to be absolutely free of matter, body, and senses. This is the intense desire to be free.
The past was great no doubt, but I sincerely believe that the future will be more glorious still.
The power is with the silent ones, who only live and love and then withdraw their personality. They never say “me” and “mine”; they are only blessed in being instruments.
The power of purity—it is a definite power.
The powers of the mind should be concentrated and the mind turned back upon itself; as the darkest places reveal their secrets before the penetrating rays of the sun, so will the concentrated mind penetrate its own innermost secrets.
The Self when it appears behind the universe is called God. The same Self when it appears behind this little universe—the body—is the soul.
The Soul is not composed of any materials. It is unity indivisible. Therefore it must be indestructible.
The varieties of religious belief are an advantage, since all faiths are good, so far as they encourage us to lead a religious life. The more sects there are, the more opportunities there are for making a successful appeal to the divine instinct in all of us.
The whole secret of existence is to have no fear. Never fear what will become of you, depend on no one. Only the moment you reject all help are you free.
The whole universe is one. There is only one Self in the universe, only One Existence.
The world is ready to give up its secrets if we only know how to knock, how to give it the necessary blow. The strength and force of the blow come through concentration.
There cannot be friendship without equality.
There is no help for you outside of yourself; you are the creator of the universe. Like the silkworm you have built a cocoon around yourself…. Burst your own cocoon and come out as the beautiful butterfly, as the free soul. Then alone you will see Truth.
There is one thing to be remembered: that the assertion—I am God—cannot be made with regard to the sense-world.
There is only one sin. That is weakness.... The only saint is that soul that never weakens, faces everything, and determines to die game.
There is to be found in every religion the manifestation of the struggle toward freedom. It is the groundwork of all morality, of unselfishness, which means getting rid of the idea that human beings are the same as this little body.
This earth is higher than all the heavens; this is the greatest school in the universe.
This I have seen in life—those who are overcautious about themselves fall into dangers at every step; those who are afraid of losing honor and respect, get only disgrace; and those who are always afraid of loss, always lose.
This is no world. It is God Himself. In delusion we call it world.
This is the first lesson to learn: be determined not to curse anything outside, not to lay the blame upon anyone outside, but stand up, lay the blame on yourself. You will find that is always true. Get hold of yourself.
This is the great lesson that we are here to learn through myriads of births and heavens and hells—that there is nothing to be asked for, desired for, beyond one’s spiritual Self (atman).
This life is a hard fact; work your way through it boldly, though it may be adamantine; no matter, the soul is stronger.
Those who grumble at the little thing that has fallen to their lot to do will grumble at everything. Always grumbling, they will lead a miserable life, and everything will be a failure. But those who do their duties as they go, putting their shoulders to the wheel, will see the light, and higher duties will fall to their share.
Those who work at a thing heart and soul not only achieve success in it but through their absorption in that they also realize the supreme truth—Brahman. Those who work at a thing with their whole heart receive help from God.
To believe blindly is to degenerate the human soul. Be an atheist if you want, but do not believe in anything unquestioningly.
Truth does not pay homage to any society, ancient or modern. Society has to pay homage to Truth or die.
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.
Watch people do their most common actions; these are indeed the things that will tell you the real character of a great person.
We are ever free if we would only believe it, only have faith enough. You are the soul, free and eternal, ever free, ever blessed. Have faith enough and you will be free in a minute.
We believe that every being is divine, is God. Every soul is a sun covered over with clouds of ignorance; the difference between soul and soul is owing to the difference in density of these layers of clouds.
We came to enjoy; we are being enjoyed. We came to rule; we are being ruled. We came to work; we are being worked. All the time, we find that. And this comes into every detail of our life.
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?
We must approach religion with reverence and with love, and our heart will stand up and say, this is truth, and this is untruth.
We must be bright and cheerful. Long faces do not make religion. Religion should be the most joyful thing in the world, because it is the best.
We must have friendship for all; we must be merciful toward those that are in misery; when people are happy, we ought to be happy; and to the wicked we must be indifferent. These attitudes will make the mind peaceful.
We reap what we sow. We are the makers of our own fate. None else has the blame, none has the praise.
We want to know in order to make ourselves free. That is our life: one universal cry for freedom.
What do you gain in heaven? You become gods, drink nectar, and get rheumatism. There is less misery there than on earth, but also less truth.
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.
When we come to nonattachment, then we can understand the marvelous mystery of the universe: how it is intense activity and at the same time intense peace, how it is work every moment and rest every moment.
When we have become free, we need not go mad and throw up society and rush off to die in the forest or the cave; we shall remain where we were but we shall understand the whole thing. The same phenomena will remain but with a new meaning.
When we have become free, we need not go mad and throw up society and rush off to die in the forest or the cave; we shall remain where we were, only we shall understand the whole thing.
Whenever we attain a higher vision, the lower vision disappears of itself.
Who makes us ignorant? We ourselves. We put our hands over our eyes and weep that it is dark.
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.
Woman has suffered for eons, and that has given her infinite patience and infinite perseverance.
Women will work out their destinies—much better, too, than men can ever do for them. All the mischief to women has come because men undertook to shape the destiny of women.
Work and worship are necessary to take away the veil, to lift off the bondage and illusion.
Work on with the intrepidity of a lion but at the same time with the tenderness of a flower.
Worship of society and popular opinion is idolatry. The soul has no sex, no country, no place, no time.

Address the 1893 World Parliament of Religions

Sisters and Brothers of America. [At this moment came the three minute standing ovation from the audience of 7,000]
It fills my heart with joy unspeakable to rise in response to the warm and cordial welcome which you have given us. I thank you in name of the most ancient order of monks in the world; I thank you in the name of the mother of religions; and I thank you in the name of millions and millions of Hindu people of all classes and sects.

My thanks also to some of the speakers on this platform who, referring to the delegates from the Orient, have told you that these men from far-off nations may well claim the honor of bearing to different lands the idea of toleration.

I am proud to belong to a religion which has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance. We believe not only in universal toleration but we accept all religions as true. I am proud to belong to a nation which has sheltered the persecuted and the refugees of all religions and all nations of the earth. I am proud to tell you that we have gathered in our bosom the purest remnant of the Israelites who came to Southern India and took refuge with us in very year in which their holy temple was shattered to pieces by Roman tyranny. I am proud to belong to the religion which has sheltered and is still fostering the remnant of the grand Zoroastrian nation.

I will quote to you brethren a few lines from a hymn which I remember to have repeated from my earliest childhood, which is every day repeated by millions of human beings: 'As the different streams having their sources in different places all mingle their water in the sea, so, O Lord, the different paths which men take through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee.'

The present convention, which is one of the most august assemblies ever held, is in itself a vindication, a declaration to the world of the wonderful doctrine preached in the Gita: 'Whosoever comes to me, though whatsoever form, I reach him; all men are struggling through paths which in the end lead to me.'

Sectarianism, bigotry, and it's horrible descendant, fanaticism, have long possessed this beautiful Earth. They have filled the earth with violence, drenched it often and often with human blood, destroyed civilization, and sent whole nations to despair. Had it not been for these horrible demons, human society would be far more advanced than it is now.
But their time is come; and I fervently hope that the bell that tolled this morning in honor of this convention may be the death-knell of all fanaticism, of all persecutions with the sword or with the pen, and of all uncharitable feelings between persons wending their way to the same goal.

If you ask me, “Is there a God?” and I say “Yes,” you immediately ask my grounds for saying so, and poor me has to exercise all his powers to provide you with some reason. If you had come to Christ and said “Is there any God?” he would have said, “Yes,” and if you had asked, “Is there any proof?” he would have replied, “Behold the Lord!”
A man who has attained certain powers through medicines, or through words, or through mortification, still has desires, but that man who has attained to Samadhi through concentration is alone free from all desires.
Society does not go down because of the activities of criminals, but because of the inactivities of the good people.
We reap what we sow. We are the makers of our own fate. None else has the blame, none has the praise.
Condemn none: if you can stretch out a helping hand, do so. If you cannot, fold your hands, bless your brothers, and let them go their own way.
You cannot believe in God until you believe in yourself.
When we really begin to live in the world, then we understand what is meant by brotherhood or mankind, and not before.
External nature is only internal nature writ large.
The world is the great gymnasium where we come to make ourselves strong.
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.
The will is not free - it is a phenomenon bound by cause and effect – but there is something behind the will which is free.
The more we come out and do good to others, the more our hearts will be purified, and God will be in them.
There is nothing beyond God, and the sense enjoyments are simply something through which we are passing now in the hope of getting better things.
The moment I have realized God sitting in the temple of every human body, the moment I stand in reverence before every human being and see God in him — that moment I am free from bondage, everything that binds vanishes, and I am free.
Our duty is to encourage every one in his struggle to live up to his own highest idea, and strive at the same time to make the ideal as near as possible to the Truth.
That man has reached immortality who is disturbed by nothing material.
You have to grow from the inside out. None can teach you, none can make you spiritual. There is no other teacher but your own soul.
The goal of mankind is knowledge. . . . Now this knowledge is inherent in man. No knowledge comes from outside: it is all inside. What we say a man “knows,” should, in strict psychological language, be what he “discovers” or “unveils”; what man “learns” is really what he discovers by taking the cover off his own soul, which is a mine of infinite knowledge.
If money help a man to do good to others, it is of some value; but if not, it is simply a mass of evil, and the sooner it is got rid of, the better.
All differences in this world are of degree, and not of kind, because oneness is the secret of everything.
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.
The greatest religion is to be true to your own nature. Have faith in yourselves!
The spirit is the cause of all our thoughts and body-action, and everything, but it is untouched by good or evil, pleasure or pain, heat of cold, and all the dualism of nature, although it lends its light to everything.
It is our own mental attitude which makes the world what it is for us. Our thought make things beautiful, our thoughts make things ugly. The whole world is in our own minds. Learn to see things in the proper light. First, believe in this world — that there is meaning behind everything. Everything in the world is good, is holy and beautiful. If you see something evil,
think that you do not understand it in the right light. Throw the burden on yourselves!
In one word, this ideal is that you are divine.
All the powers in the universe are already ours. It is we who have put our hands before our eyes and cry that it is dark.
If faith in ourselves had been more extensively taught and practiced, I am sure a very large portion of the evils and miseries that we have would have vanished.
Where can we go to find God if we cannot see Him in our own hearts and in every living being.
The Vedanta teaches that Nirvana can be attained here and now, that we do not have to wait for death to reach it. Nirvana is the realization of the Self; and after having once known that, if only for an instant, never again can one be deluded by the mirage of personality.
The Vedanta recognizes no sin it only recognizes error. And the greatest error, says the Vedanta is to say that you are weak, that you are a sinner, a miserable creature, and that you have no power and you cannot do this and that.
Never think there is anything impossible for the soul. It is the greatest heresy to think so. If there is sin, this is the only sin – to say that you are weak, or others are weak.
Truth can be stated in a thousand different ways, yet each one can be true.
Look upon every man, woman, and everyone as God. You cannot help anyone, you can only serve: serve the children of the Lord, serve the Lord Himself, if you have the privilege.
We reap what we sow. We are the makers of our own fate. None else has the blame, none has the praise.
Condemn none: if you can stretch out a helping hand, do so. If you cannot,fold your hands, bless your brothers, and let them go their own way.
You cannot believe in God until you believe in yourself.
When we really begin to live in the world, then we understand what is meant by brotherhood or mankind, and not before.
External nature is only internal nature writ large.
The world is the great gymnasium where we come to make ourselves strong.
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.
The will is not free - it is a phenomenon bound by cause and effect – but there is something behind the will which is free.
The more we come out and do good to others, the more our hearts will be purified, and God will be in them.
There is nothing beyond God, and the sense enjoyments are simply something through which we are passing now in the hope of getting better things.
The moment I have realized God sitting in the temple of every human body, the moment I stand in reverence before every human being and see God in him — that moment I am free from bondage, everything that binds vanishes, and I am free.
Our duty is to encourage every one in his struggle to live up to his own highest idea, and strive at the same time to make the ideal as near as possible to the Truth.
That man has reached immortality who is disturbed by nothing material.
You have to grow from the inside out. None can teach you, none can make you spiritual. There is no other teacher but your own soul.
The goal of mankind is knowledge. . . . Now this knowledge is inherent in man. No knowledge comes from outside: it is all inside. What we say a man “knows,” should, in strict psychological language, be what he “discovers” or “unveils”; what man “learns” is really what he discovers by taking the cover off his own soul, which is a mine of infinite knowledge.
If money help a man to do good to others, it is of some value; but if not, it is simply a mass of evil, and the sooner it is got rid of, the
better.
All differences in this world are of degree, and not of kind, because oneness is the secret of everything.
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.
The greatest religion is to be true to your own nature. Have faith in yourselves!
The spirit is the cause of all our thoughts and body-action, and
everything, but it is untouched by good or evil, pleasure or pain, heat of cold, and all the dualism of nature, although it lends its light to
everything.
It is our own mental attitude which makes the world what it is for us. Our thought make things beautiful, our thoughts make things ugly. The whole world is in our own minds. Learn to see things in the proper light. First, believe in this world — that there is meaning behind everything. Everything in the world is good, is holy and beautiful. If you see something evil, think that you do not understand it in the right light. Throw the burden on yourselves!
In one word, this ideal is that you are divine.
All the powers in the universe are already ours. It is we who have put our hands before our eyes and cry that it is dark.
If faith in ourselves had been more extensively taught and practiced, I am sure a very large portion of the evils and miseries that we have would have vanished.
Where can we go to find God if we cannot see Him in our own hearts and in every living being.
The Vedanta teaches that Nirvana can be attained here and now, that we do not have to wait for death to reach it. Nirvana is the realization of the Self; and after having once known that, if only for an instant, never again can one be deluded by the mirage of personality.
The Vedanta recognizes no sin it only recognizes error. And the greatest error, says the Vedanta is to say that you are weak, that you are a sinner, a miserable creature, and that you have no power and you cannot do this and that.
Never think there is anything impossible for the soul. It is the greatest heresy to think so. If there is sin, this is the only sin – to say that you are weak, or others are weak.
Truth can be stated in a thousand different ways, yet each one can be true.
Look upon every man, woman, and everyone as God. You cannot help anyone, you can only serve: serve the children of the Lord, serve the Lord Himself, if you have the privilege.
Choose the highest ideal and live your life upto that. Look at the "ocean" and not at the wave.
That which tends to increase the divinity in you is virtue, and that which tends to increase brutality in you is vice.
Knowledge and happiness lead to freedom.
He who sees Shiva in the poor, in the weak, and in the diseased, really worships Shiva.
We learn, through smiles and tears we learn.
Purity in thought, speech, and act is absolutely necessary for anyone to be religious. Purity is strength. Spiritual truth is purity.
Bodiless ness must be the ideal.
The ideal of the man is to see God in everything. The real evil is idleness which is the principal cause of our poverty.
………………..he who hides himself best, accomplishes most.
A Sannyasi cannot belong to any religion.
Adaptability is the whole mystery of life.
Wherever we find pleasure, there we are attached.
We are never attached where we do not find pleasure.
Everyone should know that there is no salvation except through the conquering of desires.
This has been the search (for the real) throughout the history of the human mind.
Light comes gently, slowly, but surely it comes.
Being of one mind is the secret of society.
When principles are entirely lost sight of and emotions prevail, religions degenerate into fanaticism and sectarianism.
Hiding facts is not the way to find a remedy.
Every moment is a new chance.
Human language is the attempt to express the truth that is within.
If we can bring ourselves down by our Karma, surely it is in our power to raise ourselves by it.
More of goodness, less of artificial laws.
A nation is advanced in proportion as education and intelligence spread among the masses.
The ideals of us are RENUNCIATION and SERVIVE……………….. Intensify yourself in these channels, and the rest will take care of itself.
Nature grinds all of us.
Delusion cannot be called an existence.
It is delusion always that produces delusion.
Heterogeneity is only in appearance.
Reason helps inspiration.
It is criticising each other that is at the root of all mischief.
Do not be cowardly and hypocritical.
Be perfectly pure in money dealings.
Be beyond the dualities of nature.
Do not lay the blame upon anybody.
Beware of falsehood.
Give up these weakening mysticism and be strong.
One should raise the Self by the Self.
Death being so certain, it is better to die for a good cause.
Religion is the manifestation of the Divinity already in man.
Your country reqires heroes, be heroes!
To me the very essence of education is concentration of the mind, not the collecting of facts.
Each soul is potentially divine.
Religion is the idea which is raising the brute unto man, and man unto God.
All power is within you; you can do anything and everything. Believe in that.
Work, work, work - let this be your motto.
Now the only way out is to listen to the words of the Lord in the Gita.
Be a hero. Always say, "I have no fear".
Struggle hard to get money, but don't get attached to it.
Feel that you are great and you become great.
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.
At my will mountains will crumble up. Have that sort of energy, that sort of will; work hard, and you will reach the goal.
It is those foolish people who identify themselves with their bodies that piteously cry, 'Weak, weak, we are weak'.
Keep the motto before you: "Elevation of the masses without injuring their religion".
Man never progresses from error to truth, but from truth to truth, from lesser truth to higher truth.
Avoid all weakness, for weakness is sin, weakness is death.
Never talk about the faults of others, no matter how bad they may be. Nothing is ever gained by that.
I shall inspire men everywhere until the world shall know that it is one with God.
Let us go forward and do yet greater things.
The more selfish a man, the more immoral he is.
Give to the weak, for there all the gift is needed.
Knowledge exists, man only discovers it.
31. Give up all desire for enjoyment in earth or heaven.
32. Be courageous. Do not try to lead your brethren, but serve them.
33. Be the witness and do not react, only thus can you be happy.
34. None can help you, help yourself; work out your own salvation.
35. Be not afraid of anything. You will do marvellous work.
36. Try to love anybody and everybody.
37. You have to gwo from the inside out. None can teach you, non can make you spiritual. There is no other teacher but your own soul.
38. Know it for certain that you are in everything.
39. Go on bravely. Do not expect success in a day or a year.
40. Let all your nerves vibrate through the backbone of your religion.
41. Do not talk much, but feel the spirit within you.
42. If you want to be spiritual, you must renounce.
43. Your way is the best for you, but that is no sign that it is the best for others.
44. Renounce the lower so that you may get the higher.
45. Where can we go to find God if we cannot see Him in our own hearts and in every living being?
46. Your work is to serve the poor and miserable, without distinction of caste or colour.
47. Help another because yu are in him and he is in you.
48. The poor, the illiterate, the ignorant, the afflicted,...let these be your God. Know that service to these alone is the highest religion.
49. If I am in the dark, let me light a lamp.
50. The earth's bravest and best will have to sacrifice themselves for the good of many, for the welfare of all.
51. Every duty is holy, and devotion to duty is the highest form of worship of God.
52. We only get what we deserve. It is a lie when we say, the world is bad and we are good. It can never be so.
53. You will understand the mighty strength of Krishna better with a little of strong blood in you.
54. It is struggle against nature and not conformity to nature that makes man what he is.
55. Each work has to pass through these stages - ridicule, opposition and then acceptance .
56. First there should be strict integrity...Secondly, entire devotion to the cause
57. The will is not free - it is a phenomenon bound by cause and effect - but there is something behind the will which is free.
58. You fail only when you do not strive sufficiently to manifest infinite power.
59. Whatever you do, devote your whole Mind, Heart, and Soul to it.
60. Whatever you think, that you will be. If you think yourselves weak, weak you will be; if you think yourselves strong, strong you will be.
61. Never mind failures; they are quite natural, they are the beauty of life - these failures.
62. He works best who works without any motive, neither for money, nor for fame, nor for anything else.
63. The new religion says that he is an atheist who does not believe in himself.
64. Neither seek nor avoid, take what comes.
65. You should work like a master and not as a slave; work incessantly, but do not do a slave's work
66. Believe that the soul is immortal, infinite and all powerful.
68. Be a hero. Always say, "I have no fear".
69. Our first duty is not to hate ourselves; because to advance we must have faith in ourselves first and then in God.
Even he who has seen only a spook is more spiritual than book-learned pundits.
The varieties of religious belief are an advantage, since all faiths are good, so far as they encourage us to lead a religious life. The more sects there are, the more opportunities there are for making a successful appeal to the divine instinct in all of us.
In this short life there is no time for the exchange of compliments.
If you love God's creation more than God, you will be disillusioned.
All the powers in the universe are already ours. It is we who have put our hands before our eyes and cry that it is dark.
By the study of different RELIGIONS we find that in essence they are one.
GOD is the ever-active providence, by whose power systems after systems are being evolved out of chaos, made to run for a time and again destroyed.
GOD is to be worshipped as the one beloved, dearer than everything in this and next life.
God has become man, man will become god again.
If faith in ourselves had been more extensively taught and practiced, I am sure a very large portion of the evils and miseries that we have would have vanished.
If you think about disaster, you will get it. Brood about death and you hasten your demise. Think positively and masterfully, with confidence and faith, and life becomes more secure, more fraught with action, richer in achievement and experience.
Our duty is to encourage every one in his struggle to live up to his own highest idea, and strive at the same time to make the ideal as near as possible to the Truth.
If one is a slave to his passions and desires, one cannot feel the pure joy of real freedom.
Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life - think of it, dream of it, live on 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.
That man has reached immortality who is disturbed by nothing material.
The greatest religion is to be true to your own nature. Have faith in yourselves!
The moment I have realized God sitting in the temple of every human body, the moment I stand in reverence before every human being and see God in him - that moment I am free from bondage, everything that binds vanishes, and I am free.
All desire is contained in the Self.
The Vedanta recognizes no sin it only recognizes error. And the greatest error, says the Vedanta is to say that you are weak, that you are a sinner, a miserable creature, and that you have no power and you cannot do this and that.
The will is not free - it is a phenomenon bound by cause and effect - but there is something behind the will which is free.
The world is the great gymnasium where we come to make ourselves strong.
See Him in all, good and bad alike.
Truth can be stated in a thousand different ways, yet each one can be true.
We are responsible for what we are, and whatever we wish ourselves to be, we have the power to make ourselves. If what we are now has been the result of our own past actions, it certainly follows that whatever we wish to be in future can be produced by our present actions; so we have to know how to act.
We are what our thoughts have made us; so take care about what you think. Words are secondary. Thoughts live; they travel far.
He who gives up the little self for the world will find the whole universe his.
When an idea exclusively occupies the mind, it is transformed into an actual physical or mental state.
You cannot believe in God until you believe in yourself.
Love Is The Law Of Life: All love is expansion, all selfishness is contraction. Love is therefore the only law of life. He who loves lives, he who is selfish is dying. Therefore, love for love’s sake, because it is law of life, just as you breathe to live.
It’s Your Outlook That Matters: It is our own mental attitude, which makes the world what it is for us. Our thoughts make things beautiful, our thoughts make things ugly. The whole world is in our own minds. Learn to see things in the proper light.
Manifest the divinity within you, and everything will be harmoniously arranged around it.
Life is Beautiful: First, believe in this world - that there is meaning behind everything. Everything in the world is good, is holy and beautiful. If you see something evil, think that you do not understand it in the right light. Throw the burden on yourselves!
Each human being stands for the divine.
It’s The Way You Feel: 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.
Set Yourself Free: The moment I have realised God sitting in the temple of every human body, the moment I stand in reverence before every human being and see God in him - that moment I am free from bondage, everything that binds vanishes, and I am free.
All will come to truth in the long-run.
Don’t Play The Blame Game: Condemn none: if you can stretch out a helping hand, do so. If you cannot, fold your hands, bless your brothers, and let them go their own way.
We have to go beyond the body, and beyond thought too.
Help Others: If money helps a man to do good to others, it is of some value; but if not, it is simply a mass of evil, and the sooner it is got rid of, the better.
Uphold Your Ideals: Our duty is to encourage every one in his struggle to live up to his own highest idea, and strive at the same time to make the ideal as near as possible to the Truth.
Listen To Your Soul: You have to grow from the inside out. None can teach you, none can make you spiritual. There is no other teacher but your own soul.
All of us are going towards the same goal.
Be Yourself: The greatest religion is to be true to your own nature. Have faith in yourselves!
Nothing Is Impossible: Never think there is anything impossible for the soul. It is the greatest heresy to think so. If there is sin, this is the only sin - to say that you are weak, or others are weak.
You Have The Power: All the powers in the universe are already ours. It is we who have put our hands before our eyes and cry that it is dark.
Whoever gives up this life for His sake, finds the life immortal.
Learn Everyday: The goal of mankind is knowledge… now this knowledge is inherent in man. No knowledge comes from outside: it is all inside. What we say a man ‘knows’, should, in strict psychological language, be what he ‘discovers’ or ‘unveils’; what man ‘learns’ is really what he discovers by taking the cover off his own soul, which is a mine of infinite knowledge.
He who is prepared to renounce all, who amid the strong current of the duality of good and evil, happiness and misery, is calm, steady, balanced, and awake to his ideal alone endeavours to attain to self-knowledge.
Be Truthful: Everything can be sacrificed for truth, but truth cannot be sacrificed for anything.
Think Different: All differences in this world are of degree, and not of kind, because oneness is the secret of everything.
O great sages! You were right. One who leans on others cannot serve God of Truth. Be still, my soul! Be alone! and the Lord is with you. Life is nothing! Death is a delusion! All this is not, God alone is! Fear not, my soul! Be alone.
In the presence of my Master I found out that man could be perfect, even in this body. Those lips never cursed anyone, those eyes never criticized anyone. Those eyes were beyond the possibility of seeing evil, that mind had lost the power of thinking evil. He saw nothing but good. That tremendous purity, that tremendous renunciation is the one secret of spirituality. "Neither through wealth, nor through progeny, but through renunciation alone, is inmortality to be reached," say the Vedas. "Sell all that thou hast and give to the poor, and follow Me," says the Christ. So all great saints and prophets have expressed it, and have carried it out in their lives. How can great spirituality come without that renunciation? Renunciation is the background of all religious thought wherever it be, and you will always find that as this idea of renunciation lessens, the more will the senses creep into the field of religion, and spirituality will decrease in the same ratio.
Here is a passage showing how, in the case of one of the blessed Gopis, the soul-binding chains of both merit and demerit were broken. “The intense pleasure in meditating on God took away the binding effects of her good deeds. Then her intense misery of soul in not attaining unto Him washed off all her sinful propensities; and then she became free (Vishnu-Purana).
Be one with the universe, be one with Him.
We are never attached where we do not find pleasure.
Be beyond both freedom and bondage.
Each one of us will have to discover.
Each must verify for himself.
Tell the man his defaults directly but praise his virtues before others.
New things have to be learned, have to be introduced and worked out, but is that to be done by sweeping away all that is old, just because it is old?
No one can save a person who hires a carriage to go from one street to another, and then complain of diabetes.
As different streams having different sources all mingle their waters in the sea, so different tendencies various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to God.
Our duty is to encourage every one in his struggle to live up to his own highest idea, and strive at the same time to make the ideal as near as possible to the Truth.
All the powers in the universe are already ours. It is we who have put our hands before our eyes and cry that it is dark.
I bless you all with a full heart. May Mother enshrine Herself in your hearts as strength: the support that is fearlessness – May she make you all fearless. This I have seen in life – he who is over-cautious about himself, falls into dangers at every step; he who is afraid of losing honor and respect, gets only disgrace; he who is always afraid of loss, always loses…May all good attend you all.
All the powers in the universe are already ours. It is we who have put our hands before our eyes and cry that it is dark.
By the study of different RELIGIONS we find that in essence they are one.
GOD is the ever-active providence, by whose power systems after systems are being evolved out of chaos, made to run for a time and again destroyed.
GOD is to be worshipped as the one beloved, dearer than everything in this and next life.
If faith in ourselves had been more extensively taught and practiced, I am sure a very large portion of the evils and miseries that we have would have vanished.
If you think about disaster, you will get it. Brood about death and you hasten your demise. Think positively and masterfully, with confidence and faith, and life becomes more secure, more fraught with action, richer in achievement and experience.
Our duty is to encourage every one in his struggle to live up to his own highest idea, and strive at the same time to make the ideal as near as possible to the Truth.
Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life - think of it, dream of it, live on 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.
That man has reached immortality who is disturbed by nothing material.
The greatest religion is to be true to your own nature. Have faith in yourselves!
The moment I have realized God sitting in the temple of every human body, the moment I stand in reverence before every human being and see God in him - that moment I am free from bondage, everything that binds vanishes, and I am free.
The Vedanta recognizes no sin it only recognizes error. And the greatest error, says the Vedanta is to say that you are weak, that you are a sinner, a miserable creature, and that you have no power and you cannot do this and that.
The will is not free - it is a phenomenon bound by cause and effect - but there is something behind the will which is free.
The world is the great gymnasium where we come to make ourselves strong.
Truth can be stated in a thousand different ways, yet each one can be true.
We are responsible for what we are, and whatever we wish ourselves to be, we have the power to make ourselves. If what we are now has been the result of our own past actions, it certainly follows that whatever we wish to be in future can be produced by our present actions; so we have to know how to act.
We are what our thoughts have made us; so take care about what you think. Words are secondary. Thoughts live; they travel far.
When an idea exclusively occupies the mind, it is transformed into an actual physical or mental state.
You cannot believe in God until you believe in yourself.
Choose the highest ideal and live your life upto that. Look at the "ocean" and not at the wave.
Face facts as facts.
That which tends to increase the divinity in you is virtue, and that which tends to increase brutality in you is vice.
Save yourself by yourself.
What you want, you create.
He who sees Shiva in the poor, in the weak, and in the diseased, really worships Shiva.
Purity in thought, speech, and act is absolutely necessary for anyone to be religious. Purity is strength. Spiritual truth is purity.
Truce to all quarrels and jealousies and bigotry! These will spoil everything.
The ideal of the man is to see God in everything. The real evil is idleness which is the principal cause of our poverty.
Fight and reason and argue; and when you have established it in your mind that this alone can be the truth and nothing else, do not argue any more; close your mouth.
Everyone should know that there is no salvation except through the conquering of desires.
Death being so certain, it is better to die for a good cause.
Religion is the manifestation of the Divinity already in man.
Your country requires heroes, be heroes!
To me the very essence of education is concentration of the mind, not the collecting of facts.
Each soul is potentially divine.
Religion is the idea which is raising the brute unto man, and man unto God.
All power is within you; you can do anything and everything. Believe in that.
Work, work, work - let this be your motto.
Now the only way out is to listen to the words of the Lord in the Gita.

Other Sayings of Swami Vivekananda

Sayings of Swami Vivekananda

Address the 1893 World Parliament of Religions