Swami Vivekananda Quotes

All the powers in the universe are already ours.

Oh, to live even for a day in the full light of freedom, to breathe the free air of simplicity! Isn't that the highest purity?

Never can a reforming sect survive if it is only reforming; the formative elements alone - the real impulse, that is, the principles - live on and on.

Give up, renounce the world. Now we are like dogs strayed into a kitchen and eating a piece of meat, looking round in fear lest at any moment some one may come and drive them out. Instead of that, be a king and know you own the world. This never comes until you give it up and it ceases to bind. Give up mentally, if you do not physically. Give up from the heart of your hearts

Love conquers in the long run. It won't do to become impatient - wait, wait - patience is bound to give success. . . .

When we free ourselves from name and form, especially from a body - when we need no body, good or bad - then only do we escape from bondage. Eternal progression is eternal bondage; annihilation of form is to be preferred. We must get free from any body, even a "god-body". God is the only real existence, there cannot be two. There is but One Soul, and I am That.

They alone live, who live for others.

It is the Prana that is manifesting as motion.

Get up, and set your shoulder to the wheel - How long is this life for? As you have come into this world, leave some mark behind. Otherwise, where is the difference between you and the trees and stones? They too come into existence, decay and die.

He in whose mind is no anger, hatred, or envy, who never loses his balance, dies, or is born, who is he but God?

Man is guided by the stomach. He walks and the stomach goes first and the head afterwards. Have you not seen that? It will take ages for the head to go first.

There is no limit to the power of the human mind. The more concentrated it is, the more power is brought to bear on one point

Thought ceases in meditation; even the mind's elements are quite quiet. Blood circulation stops. His breath stops, but he is not dead.

Let each one of us pray day and night for the downtrodden millions who are held fast by poverty, priestcraft, and tyranny. Pray day and night for them. I care more to preach religion to them than to the high and the rich.

This is the line of life, this is the line of growth, and this is the line of well-being in India - to follow the track of religion.

There is no help for you outside of yourself; you are the creator of the universe. Like the silkworm you have built a cocoon around yourself.... Burst your own cocoon and come out as the beautiful butterfly, as the free soul. Then alone you will see Truth.

Always keep the mind cheerful. Everyone will die once. Cowards suffer the pangs of death again and again, solely due to the fear in their own minds.

Since everything emanates from God, he is the embodied principle in every being. Each one of us is made from God. Tat twam asi - "You are That One" who is eternally blissful, that one principle manifesting itself as this variety of Creation.

He who has conquered the internal nature controls the whole universe; it becomes his servant.

Take courage and work on. Patience and steady work- this is the only way.

The world has seen thousands of prophets, and the world has yet to see millions

Meditation means the mind is turned back upon itself. The mind stops all the thought-waves and the world stops. Your consciousness expands. Every time you meditate you will keep your growth.

Everything, both mental and physical, is rigidly bound by the law of causation.

The sky never changes: it is the cloud that is changing.

We must have friendship for all; we must be merciful toward those that are in misery; when people are happy, we ought to be happy; and to the wicked we must be indifferent. These attitudes will make the mind peaceful.

I do not believe in eternal progress, that we are growing on ever and ever in a straight line. It is too nonsensical to believe. There is no motion in a straight line. A straight line infinitely projected becomes a circle. The force sent out will complete the circle and return to its starting place.

This is no world. It is God Himself. In delusion we call it world.

Even the lowest of the Hindus, the Pariah, has less of the brute in him than a Briton in a similar social status. This is the result of an old and excellent religious civilization. This evolution to a higher spiritual state is possible only through discipline and education.

The body and mind are continually changing, and are, in fact, only names of series of changeful phenomena, like rivers whose waters are in a constant state of flux, yet presenting the appearance of unbroken streams. Every particle in this body is continually changing; no one has the same body for many minutes together, and yet we think of it as the same body.

Life in this world is an attempt to see God.

Have faith in Guru, in his teachings, and in the surety that you can get free. Think day and night that this universe is zero, only God is. Have intense desire to get free.

The idol is the expression of religion.

I 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.

Jnana teaches that the world should be given up, but not on that account to be abandoned. To be in the world but not of it-is the true test of the sannyasin.

Salvation never will come through hope of reward.

I do not care what philosophy you take up; only I am ready to prove here that throughout the whole of India, there runs a mutual and cordial string of eternal faith in the perfection of humanity, and I believe in it myself. And let that faith be spread over the whole land.

Praise and blame, good and bad, even heat and cold, must be equally acceptable to us.

The world is a demon. It is a kingdom of which the puny ego is king. Put it away and stand firm.

Then from the world all spirituality will be extinct, all moral perfection will be extinct, all sweet-souled sympathy for religion will be extinct, all ideality will be extinct; and in its place will reign the duality of lust and luxury as the male and female deities, with money as its priest, fraud, force, and competition its ceremonies, and the human soul its sacrifice. Such a thing can never be.

When death is so certain, it is better to die for a good cause.

Where God is, there is no other. Where world is, there is no God. These two will never unite. Like light and darkness.

I am no metaphysician, no philosopher, nay, no saint. But I am poor and I love the poor. I see what they call the poor of this country and how many there are who feel for them!

Real freedom is not merely doing what you like, but also NOT doing what you like.

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

. . . it is difficult for Europeans to appreciate the sentiment. Other nations kill animals by wholesale and kill one another; they exist in a sea of blood. A European said that the reason why in India animals were not killed was because it was supposed that they contained the spirits of ancestors. This reason was worthy of a savage nation who are not many steps from the brute.

The Church tries to fit Christ into it, not the Church into Christ.

Look here — we shall all die! Bear this in mind always, and then the spirit within will wake up. Then only, meanness will vanish from you, practicality in work will come, you will get new vigour in mind and body, and those who come in contact with you will also feel that they have really got something uplifting from you.

This intelligence itself is modified into what we call egoism, and this intelligence is the cause of all the powers in the body. It covers the whole ground, sub-consciousness, consciousness, and super-consciousness.