Books are good but they are only maps. Reading a book by direction of a man I read that so many inches of rain fell during the year. Then he told me to take the book and squeeze it between my hands. I did so and not a drop of water came from it. It was the idea only that the book conveyed. So we can get good from books, from the temple, from the church, from anything, so long as it leads us onward and upward.
Swami VivekanandaEducation is not filling the mind with a lot of facts. Perfecting the instrument and getting complete mastery of my own mind [is the ideal of education].
Swami VivekanandaRealisation of love can never come so long as there is the least desire in the heart, or what Shri Ramakrishna used to say, attachment for Kรขma-Kรขnchana (sense-pleasure and wealth). In the perfect realisation of love, even the consciousness of one's own body does not exist. Also, the supreme Jnana is to realise the oneness everywhere, to see one's own self as the Self in everything. That too cannot come so long as there is the least consciousness of the ego (Aham).
Swami VivekanandaMaterialism prevails in Europe today. You may pray for the salvation of the modern sceptics, but they do not yield, they want reason.
Swami Vivekananda