Quotes by Swami Vivekananda

• Everyone should know that there is no salvation except through the conquering of desires.

• Purity is strength. Spiritual truth is purity.

• 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 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.

• 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.

• The first sign that you are becoming religious is that you are becoming cheerful.

• 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 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.

• There is only one sin. That is weakness.... The only saint is that soul that never weakens, faces everything, and determines to die game.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• “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.

• 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.

• Neither seek nor avoid; take what comes. It is liberty to be affected by nothing. Do not merely endure; be unattached. 

• 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.

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

• 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 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• Don't look back—forward, infinite energy, infinite enthusiasm, infinite daring, and infinite patience—then alone can great deeds be accomplished.

• Anything that brings spiritual, mental, or physical weakness, touch it not with the toes of your feet.

• 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.

• We must approach religion with reverence and with love, and our heart will stand up and say, this is truth, and this is untruth.

• The power of purity—it is a definite power.

• 'The world is the great gymnasium where we come to make ourself 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.' 

• 'THERE is nothing beyond God, and the sense enjoyments are simply something through which we are passing now in the hope of getting things.' 

• 'As the different streams having their sources in different paths which men take through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee.

• 'THROUGH prayer, the love of God grows and assumes a form which is called supreme devotion. Forms vanish, retuals fly away, books are superseded, images, temples, churches, religions and sects, countries and nationalities - all these little limitations and bondages fall off by their own nature from him who knows this love of God.'

• IT is good to love God for hope of reward, but it is better to love God for love's sake; and the prayer goes: O Lord, I do not want wealth nor, children nor learning. If it be Thy will, I shall go from birth to birth. But grant me this, that I may love thee without the hope of reward--'love'' unselfishly for love's sake.

• 'My nature is love Him. And therefore I love. I do not pray for any-thing. I do not ask for anything. Let Him place me wherever He likes. I must love Him for love's sake. I can not trade in love.'

• 'HOW to worship Him? through love. He is to be worshipped as the one beloved dear than everything in this and the next life .' 

• 'GOD of truth, be Thou alone my guide..'

• You cannot believe in God until you believe in yourself.

• We must approach religion with reverence and with love, and our heart will stand up and say, this is truth, and this is untruth.

• It is feeling that is the life, the strength, the vitality, without which no amount of intellectual activity can reach God.

• Learning and wisdom are superfluities, the surface glitter merely, but it is the heart that is the seat of all power.

• 'TO worship God even for the sake of salvation or any other reward is equally degenerate. Love knows no reward. Give your love unto to God, but do not ask anything in return even from Him through pray.'

• 'PRAYER is divine love alone. When this highest ideal of love is reached, philosophy is thrown away. Who will then care of it ? Freedom, salvation, nirvana- all are thrown away. Who cares to become free while in the enjoyment of divine love? '

• Purity in thought, speech, and act is absolutely necessary for anyone to be religious. 

• That which tends to increase the divinity in you is virtue, and that which tends to increase brutality in you is vice.

• 'We see that the apparent contradictions and perplexities in every RELIGION mark but different stages of growth. The end of all religions is the realizing of God in the soul. That is the one universal religion.'

• To me the very essence of education is concentration of the mind, not the collecting of facts.

• Let all your nerves vibrate through the backbone of your religion.

• The first sign that you are becoming religious is that you are becoming cheerful.

• There is only one sin. That is weakness.... The only saint is that soul that never weakens, faces everything, and determines to die game.

• Desire, ignorance, and inequality—this is the trinity of bondage.

• If superstition enters, the brain is gone.

• 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.