This world is nothing. It is at best only a hideous caricature, a shadow of the Real. 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.
Swami VivekanandaTo give up the world is to forget the ego, to know it not at all - living in the body, but not of it.
Swami VivekanandaThe will is not free - it is a phenomenon bound by cause and effect - but there is something behind the will which is free.
Swami VivekanandaArt must be in touch with nature - and wherever that touch is gone, Art degenerates - yet it must be above nature.
Swami VivekanandaI 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!
Swami VivekanandaWe are all born idolaters, and idolatry is good, because it is in the nature of man. Who can get beyond it? Only the perfect man, the God-man. The rest are all idolaters. So long as we see this universe before us, with its forms and shapes, we are all idolaters. This is a gigantic symbol we are worshipping. He who says he is the body is a born idolater.
Swami Vivekananda