In India the mother is the center of the family and our highest ideal. She is to us the representative of God, as God is the mother of the universe. It was a female sage who first found the unity of God, and laid down this doctrine in one of the first hy mns of the Vedas. Our God is both personal and absolute, the absolute is male, the personal, female. And thus it comes that we now say: 'The first manifestation of God is the hand that rocks the cradle'.
Swami VivekanandaWhere can we go to find God if we cannot see Him in our own hearts and in every living being.
Swami VivekanandaThe 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.
Swami VivekanandaThe natural state of this universe is attraction; and that is surely followed by an ultimate disunion.
Swami VivekanandaI am thoroughly convinced that no individual or nation can live by holding itself apart from the community of others. Give and take is the law; and if India wants to raise herself once more, it is absolutely necessary that she brings out her treasures and throws them broadcast among the nations of the earth, and in return be ready to receive what others have to give her. Expansion is life, contraction is death. Love is life, and hatred is death. We commenced to die the day we began to hate other races; and nothing can prevent our death unless we come back to expansion, which is life.
Swami Vivekananda