Vivekananda; Swami (Swami Vivekananda)

Condemn none: if you can stretch out a helping hand, do so. If you cannot, fold your hands, bless your brothers, and let them go their own way.
-- Swami Vivekananda

When we really begin to live in the world, then we understand what is meant by brotherhood or mankind, and not before.
-- Swami Vivekananda

External nature is only internal nature writ large.
-- Swami Vivekananda

The world is the great gymnasium where we come to make ourselves strong.
-- Swami Vivekananda

Feel like Christ and you will be a Christ; feel like Buddha and you will be a Buddha. It is feeling that is the life, the strength, the vitality, without which no amount of intellectual activity can reach God.
-- Swami Vivekananda

The will is not free - it is a phenomenon bound by cause and effect - but there is something behind the will which is free.
-- Swami Vivekananda

Our duty is to encourage every one in his struggle to live up to his own highest idea, and strive at the same time to make the ideal as near as possible to the Truth.
-- Swami Vivekananda

That man has reached immortality who is disturbed by nothing material.
-- Swami Vivekananda

You have to grow from the inside out. None can teach you, none can make you spiritual. There is no other teacher but your own soul.
-- Swami Vivekananda

The goal of mankind is knowledge. . . . Now this knowledge is inherent in man. No knowledge comes from outside: it is all inside. What we say a man "knows," should, in strict psychological language, be what he "discovers" or "unveils"; what man "learns" is really what he discovers by taking the cover off his own soul, which is a mine of infinite knowledge.
-- Swami Vivekananda

If money help a man to do good to others, it is of some value; but if not, it is simply a mass of evil, and the sooner it is got rid of, the better.
-- Swami Vivekananda

All differences in this world are of degree, and not of kind, because oneness is the secret of everything.
-- Swami Vivekananda

To devote your life to the good of all and to the happiness of all is religion. Whatever you do for your own sake is not religion.
-- Swami Vivekananda

The greatest religion is to be true to your own nature. Have faith in yourselves!
-- Swami Vivekananda

The spirit is the cause of all our thoughts and body-action, and everything, but it is untouched by good or evil, pleasure or pain, heat of cold, and all the dualism of nature, although it lends its light to everything.
-- Swami Vivekananda

It is our own mental attitude which makes the world what it is for us. Our thought make things beautiful, our thoughts make things ugly. The whole world is in our own minds. Learn to see things in the proper light. First, believe in this world -- that there is meaning behind everything. Everything in the world is good, is holy and beautiful. If you see something evil, think that you are not understanding it in the right light. throw the burden on yourselves!
-- Swami Vivekananda

In one word, this ideal is that you are divine.
-- Swami Vivekananda

All the powers in the universe are already ours. It is we who have put our hands before our eyes and cry that it is dark.
-- Swami Vivekananda

If faith in ourselves had been more extensively taught and practiced, I am sure a very large portion of the evils and miseries that we have would have vanished.
-- Swami Vivekananda

Truth can be stated in a thousand different ways, yet each one can be true.
-- Swami Vivekananda


-- Swami Vivekananda


-- Swami Vivekananda

A few heart-whole, sincere, and energetic men and women can do more in a year than a mob in a century.
-- Swami Vivekananda

A tremendous stream is flowing toward the ocean, carrying us all along with it; and though like straws and scraps of paper we may at times float aimlessly about, in the long run we are sure to join the Ocean of Life and Bliss.
-- Swami Vivekananda

All is the Self or Brahman. The saint, the sinner, the lamb, the tiger, even the murderer, as far as they have any reality, can be nothing else, because there is nothing else.
-- Swami Vivekananda

All knowledge that the world has ever received comes from the mind; the infinite library of the universe is in our own mind.
-- Swami Vivekananda

All truth is eternal. Truth is nobody
-- Swami Vivekananda

All who have actually attained any real religious experience never wrangle over the form in which the different religions are expressed. They know that the soul of all religions is the same and so they have no quarrel with anybody just because he or she does not speak in the same tongue.
-- Swami Vivekananda

Anything that brings spiritual, mental, or physical weakness, touch it not with the toes of your feet.
-- Swami Vivekananda

Anything that is secret and mysterious in these systems of yoga should be at once rejected. The best guide in life is strength. In religion, as in all other matters, discard everything that weakens you, have nothing to do with it.
-- Swami Vivekananda

Are great things ever done smoothly? Time, patience, and indomitable will must show.
-- Swami Vivekananda

Are you unselfish? That is the question. If you are, you will be perfect without reading a single religious book, without going into a single church or temple.
-- Swami Vivekananda

As body, mind, or soul, you are a dream; you really are Being, Consciousness, Bliss (satchidananda). You are the God of this universe.
-- Swami Vivekananda

As long as we believe ourselves to be even the least different from God, fear remains with us; but when we know ourselves to be the One, fear goes; of what can we be afraid?
-- Swami Vivekananda

As soon as I think that I am a little body, I want to preserve it, to protect it, to keep it nice, at the expense of other bodies; then you and I become separate.
-- Swami Vivekananda

As soon as you know the voice and understand what it is, the whole scene changes. The same world which was the ghastly battlefield of maya is now changed into something good and beautiful.
-- Swami Vivekananda

Astrology and all these mystical things are generally signs of a weak mind; therefore as soon as they are becoming prominent in our minds, we should see a physician, take good food, and rest.
-- Swami Vivekananda

Be a hero. Always say,
-- Swami Vivekananda

Blows are what awaken us and help to break the dream. They show us the insufficiency of this world and make us long to escape, to have freedom.
-- Swami Vivekananda

Both the forces of good and evil will keep the universe alive for us, until we awake from our dreams and give up this building of mud pies.
-- Swami Vivekananda

Come out into the broad light of day, come out from the little narrow paths, for how can the infinite soul rest content to live and die in small ruts?
-- Swami Vivekananda

Come out into the universe of Light. Everything in the universe is yours, stretch out your arms and embrace it with love. If you every felt you wanted to do that, you have felt God.
-- Swami Vivekananda

Delusion will vanish as the light becomes more and more effulgent, load after load of ignorance will vanish, and then will come a time when all else has disappeared and the sun alone shines.
-- Swami Vivekananda

Desire, ignorance, and inequality
-- Swami Vivekananda

Despondency is not religion, whatever else it may be.
-- Swami Vivekananda

Do any deserve liberty who are not ready to give it to others? Let us calmly go to work, instead of dissipating our energy in unnecessary fretting and fuming.
-- Swami Vivekananda

Do not look back upon what has been done. Go ahead!
-- Swami Vivekananda

Don't look back
-- Swami Vivekananda

Each work has to pass through these stages
-- Swami Vivekananda

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.
-- Swami Vivekananda

Every action that helps us manifest our divine nature more and more is good; every action that retards it is evil.
-- Swami Vivekananda

Every individual is a center for the manifestation of a certain force. This force has been stored up as the resultant of our previous works, and each one of us is born with this force at our back.
-- Swami Vivekananda

Every step I take in light is mine forever.
-- Swami Vivekananda

Everything must be sacrificed, if necessary, for that one sentiment: universality.
-- Swami Vivekananda

Fear is death, fear is sin, fear is hell, fear is unrighteousness, fear is wrong life. All the negative thoughts and ideas that are in the world have proceeded from this evil spirit of fear.
-- Swami Vivekananda

Fill the brain with high thoughts, highest ideals, place them day and night before you, and out of that will come great work.
-- Swami Vivekananda

First get rid of the delusion
-- Swami Vivekananda

First, believe in the world
-- Swami Vivekananda

Freedom can never be reached by the weak. Throw away all weakness. Tell your body that it is strong, tell your mind that it is strong, and have unbounded faith and hope in yourself.
-- Swami Vivekananda

Go on saying,
-- Swami Vivekananda

Great work requires great and persistent effort for a long time.
-- Swami Vivekananda

Have you got the will to surmount mountain-high obstructions? If the whole world stands against you sword in hand, would you still dare to do what you think is right?
-- Swami Vivekananda

He whom the sages have been seeking in all these places is in our own hearts; the voice that you heard was right, says Vedanta, but the direction you gave to the voice was wrong.
-- Swami Vivekananda

Hold to the idea,
-- Swami Vivekananda

However we may receive blows, and however knocked about we may be, the Soul is there and is never injured. We are that Infinite.
-- Swami Vivekananda

I fervently wish no misery ever came near anyone; yet it is that alone that gives us an insight into the depths of our lives, does it not? In our moments of anguish, gates barred forever seem to open and let in many a flood of light.
-- Swami Vivekananda

I, for one, thoroughly believe that no power in the universe can withhold from anyone anything they really deserve.
-- Swami Vivekananda

If a piece of burning charcoal be placed on a man
-- Swami Vivekananda

If superstition enters, the brain is gone.
-- Swami Vivekananda

If there is one word that you find coming out like a bomb from the Upanishads, bursting like a bombshell upon masses of ignorance, it is the word
-- Swami Vivekananda

If you think that you are bound, you remain bound; you make your own bondage. If you know that you are free, you are free this moment. This is knowledge, knowledge of freedom. Freedom is the goal of all nature.
-- Swami Vivekananda

If you want to have life, you have to die every moment for it. Life and death are only different expressions of the same thing looked at from different standpoints; they are the falling and the rising of the same wave, and the two form one whole.
-- Swami Vivekananda

Impurity is a mere superimposition under which your real nature has become hidden. But the real you is already perfect, already strong.
-- Swami Vivekananda

Is there any sex-distinction in the Atman (Self)? Out with the differentiation between man and woman
-- Swami Vivekananda

It is the cheerful mind that is persevering. It is the strong mind that hews its way through a thousand difficulties.
-- Swami Vivekananda

It is the patient building of character, the intense struggle to realize the truth, which alone will tell in the future of humanity.
-- Swami Vivekananda

Karma is the eternal assertion of human freedom. If we can bring ourselves down by our karma, surely it is in our power to raise ourselves by our own karma.
-- Swami Vivekananda

Knowledge can only be got in one way, the way of experience; there is no other way to know.
-- Swami Vivekananda

Learning and wisdom are superfluities, the surface glitter merely, but it is the heart that is the seat of all power.
-- Swami Vivekananda

Learning and wisdom are superfluities, the surface glitter merely, but it is the heart that is the seat of all power. It is not in the brain but in the heart that the Atman, possessed of knowledge, power, and activity, has its seat.
-- Swami Vivekananda

Let us not depend upon the world for pleasure.
-- Swami Vivekananda

Let us worship the spirit in spirit, standing on spirit. Let the foundation be spirit, the middle spirit, the culmination spirit.
-- Swami Vivekananda

Look upon every man, woman, and everyone as God. You cannot help anyone, you can only serve: serve the children of the Lord, serve the Lord Himself, if you have the privilege.
-- Swami Vivekananda

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.
-- Swami Vivekananda

Neither seek nor avoid; take what comes. It is liberty to be affected by nothing. Do not merely endure; be unattached.
-- Swami Vivekananda

Our supreme duty is to advance toward freedom
-- Swami Vivekananda

Perfection does not come from belief or faith. Talk does not count for anything. Parrots can do that. Perfection comes through selfless work.
-- Swami Vivekananda

Perfection is always infinite. We are the Infinite already.You and I, and all beings, are trying to manifest that infinity.
-- Swami Vivekananda

Please everyone without becoming a hypocrite or a coward.
-- Swami Vivekananda

Pray all the time, read all the scriptures in the world, and worship all the gods there are ...but unless you realize the Truth, there is no freedom.
-- Swami Vivekananda

Pray all the time, read all the scriptures in the world, and worship all the gods there are
-- Swami Vivekananda

Purity, patience, and perseverance are the three essentials to success and, above all, love.
-- Swami Vivekananda

So long as there is desire or want, it is a sure sign that there is imperfection. A perfect, free being cannot have any desire.
-- Swami Vivekananda

Soft-brained people, weak-minded, chicken-hearted, cannot find the truth. One has to be free, and as broad as the sky.
-- Swami Vivekananda

Stand as a rock; you are indestructible. You are the Self (atman), the God of the universe.
-- Swami Vivekananda

Stand up, be bold, be strong. Take the whole responsibility on your own shoulders, and know that you are the creator of your own destiny. All the strength and succor you want is within yourself. Therefore make your own future.
-- Swami Vivekananda

Stand upon the Self, only then can we truly love the world. Take a very high stand; knowing our universal nature, we must look with perfect calmness upon all the panorama of the world.
-- Swami Vivekananda

Strength is the sign of vigor, the sign of life, the sign of hope, the sign of health, and the sign of everything that is good. As long as the body lives, there must be strength in the body, strength in the mind, strength in the hand.
-- Swami Vivekananda

Superstition is our great enemy, but bigotry is worse.
-- Swami Vivekananda

Tell the truth boldly, whether it hurts or not. Never pander to weakness. If truth is too much for intelligent people and sweeps them away, let them go; the sooner the better.
-- Swami Vivekananda

The essence of Vedanta is that there is but one Being and that every soul is that Being in full, not a part of that Being.
-- Swami Vivekananda

The essential thing in religion is making the heart pure; the Kingdom of Heaven is within us, but only the pure in heart can see the King. While we think of the world, it is only the world for us; but let us come to it with the feeling that the world is God, and we shall have God.
-- Swami Vivekananda

The greatest religion is to be true to your own nature. Have faith in yourselves!
-- Swami Vivekananda

The human soul has sojourned in lower and higher forms, migrating from one to another according to the samskaras or impressions, but it is only in the highest form as a human being that it attains to freedom.
-- Swami Vivekananda

The important thing is: how much less you think of the body, of yourself as matter
-- Swami Vivekananda

The less passion there is, the better we work. The calmer we are, the better for us and the more the amount of work we can do. When we let loose our feelings, we waste so much energy, shatter our nerves, disturb our minds, and accomplish very little work.
-- Swami Vivekananda

The mind is but the subtle part of the body. You must retain great strength in your mind and words.
-- Swami Vivekananda

The mistake is that we cling to the body when it is the spirit that is really immortal.
-- Swami Vivekananda

The more you think of yourself as shining immortal spirit, the more eager you will be to be absolutely free of matter, body, and senses. This is the intense desire to be free.
-- Swami Vivekananda

The past was great no doubt, but I sincerely believe that the future will be more glorious still.
-- Swami Vivekananda

The power is with the silent ones, who only live and love and then withdraw their personality. They never say
-- Swami Vivekananda

The power of purity
-- Swami Vivekananda

The powers of the mind should be concentrated and the mind turned back upon itself; as the darkest places reveal their secrets before the penetrating rays of the sun, so will the concentrated mind penetrate its own innermost secrets.
-- Swami Vivekananda

The Self when it appears behind the universe is called God. The same Self when it appears behind this little universe
-- Swami Vivekananda

The Soul is not composed of any materials. It is unity indivisible. Therefore it must be indestructible.
-- Swami Vivekananda

The varieties of religious belief are an advantage, since all faiths are good, so far as they encourage us to lead a religious life. The more sects there are, the more opportunities there are for making a successful appeal to the divine instinct in all of us.
-- Swami Vivekananda

The whole secret of existence is to have no fear. Never fear what will become of you, depend on no one. Only the moment you reject all help are you free.
-- Swami Vivekananda

The whole universe is one. There is only one Self in the universe, only One Existence.
-- Swami Vivekananda

The world is ready to give up its secrets if we only know how to knock, how to give it the necessary blow. The strength and force of the blow come through concentration.
-- Swami Vivekananda

There cannot be friendship without equality.
-- Swami Vivekananda

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
-- Swami Vivekananda

There is one thing to be remembered: that the assertion
-- Swami Vivekananda

There is only one sin. That is weakness.... The only saint is that soul that never weakens, faces everything, and determines to die game.
-- Swami Vivekananda

There is to be found in every religion the manifestation of the struggle toward freedom. It is the groundwork of all morality, of unselfishness, which means getting rid of the idea that human beings are the same as this little body.
-- Swami Vivekananda

This earth is higher than all the heavens; this is the greatest school in the universe.
-- Swami Vivekananda

This I have seen in life
-- Swami Vivekananda

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

This is the first lesson to learn: be determined not to curse anything outside, not to lay the blame upon anyone outside, but stand up, lay the blame on yourself. You will find that is always true. Get hold of yourself.
-- Swami Vivekananda

This is the great lesson that we are here to learn through myriads of births and heavens and hells
-- Swami Vivekananda

This life is a hard fact; work your way through it boldly, though it may be adamantine; no matter, the soul is stronger.
-- Swami Vivekananda

Those who grumble at the little thing that has fallen to their lot to do will grumble at everything. Always grumbling, they will lead a miserable life, and everything will be a failure. But those who do their duties as they go, putting their shoulders to the wheel, will see the light, and higher duties will fall to their share.
-- Swami Vivekananda

Those who work at a thing heart and soul not only achieve success in it but through their absorption in that they also realize the supreme truth
-- Swami Vivekananda

To believe blindly is to degenerate the human soul. Be an atheist if you want, but do not believe in anything unquestioningly.
-- Swami Vivekananda

Truth does not pay homage to any society, ancient or modern. Society has to pay homage to Truth or die.
-- Swami Vivekananda

Understanding human nature is the highest knowledge, and only by knowing it can we know God. It is also a fact that the knowledge of God is the highest knowledge, and only by knowing God can we understand human nature.
-- Swami Vivekananda

Watch people do their most common actions; these are indeed the things that will tell you the real character of a great person.
-- Swami Vivekananda

We are ever free if we would only believe it, only have faith enough. You are the soul, free and eternal, ever free, ever blessed. Have faith enough and you will be free in a minute.
-- Swami Vivekananda

We believe that every being is divine, is God. Every soul is a sun covered over with clouds of ignorance; the difference between soul and soul is owing to the difference in density of these layers of clouds.
-- Swami Vivekananda

We came to enjoy; we are being enjoyed. We came to rule; we are being ruled. We came to work; we are being worked. All the time, we find that. And this comes into every detail of our life.
-- Swami Vivekananda

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.
-- Swami Vivekananda

We reap what we sow. We are the makers of our own fate. None else has the blame, none has the praise.
-- Swami Vivekananda

We want to know in order to make ourselves free. That is our life: one universal cry for freedom.
-- Swami Vivekananda

What do you gain in heaven? You become gods, drink nectar, and get rheumatism. There is less misery there than on earth, but also less truth.
-- Swami Vivekananda

What the world wants is character. The world is in need of those whose life is one burning love, selfless. That love will make every word tell like a thunderbolt.
-- Swami Vivekananda

When we come to nonattachment, then we can understand the marvelous mystery of the universe: how it is intense activity and at the same time intense peace, how it is work every moment and rest every moment.
-- Swami Vivekananda

When we have become free, we need not go mad and throw up society and rush off to die in the forest or the cave; we shall remain where we were but we shall understand the whole thing. The same phenomena will remain but with a new meaning.
-- Swami Vivekananda

When we have become free, we need not go mad and throw up society and rush off to die in the forest or the cave; we shall remain where we were, only we shall understand the whole thing.
-- Swami Vivekananda

Whenever we attain a higher vision, the lower vision disappears of itself.
-- Swami Vivekananda

Who makes us ignorant? We ourselves. We put our hands over our eyes and weep that it is dark.
-- Swami Vivekananda

Why are people so afraid? The answer is that they have made themselves helpless and dependent on others. We are so lazy, we do not want to do anything ourselves. We want a Personal God, a Savior or a Prophet to do everything for us.
-- Swami Vivekananda

Work and worship are necessary to take away the veil, to lift off the bondage and illusion.
-- Swami Vivekananda

Work on with the intrepidity of a lion but at the same time with the tenderness of a flower.
-- Swami Vivekananda

Worship of society and popular opinion is idolatry. The soul has no sex, no country, no place, no time.
-- Swami Vivekananda

You cannot believe in God until you believe in yourself.
-- Swami Vivekananda

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