You are the makers of your own fortunes. You make yourselves suffer, you make good and evil, and it is you who put your hands before your eyes and say it is dark. Take your hands away and see the light.

My countrymen should have nerves of steel, muscles of iron, and minds like thunderbolt.

The awakening of the soul to its bondage and its effort to stand up and assert itself - this is called life.

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.

The forms are evanescent; but the spirit, being in the Lord and of the Lord, is immortal and omnipresent.

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.

Self-sacrifice, not self-assertion, is the law of the highest universe.