Swami Vivekananda
Man will have to go beyond intellect in the end.Collection: Men
He is an atheist who does not believe in himself. The old religions said that he was an atheist who did not believe in God. The new religion says that he is an atheist who does not believe in himself.Collection: Atheist
The finer the instrument, the greater the power. The mind is much finer and more powerful than the body.Collection: Powerful
Be not Afraid of anything. You will do Marvelous work. it is Fearlessness that brings Heaven even in a moment.Collection: Heaven
Let positive, strong, helpful thoughts enter into your brains from very childhood. Lay yourselves open to these thoughts, and not to weakening and paralysing ones.Collection: Motivational
If a piece of burning charcoal be placed on a man’s head, see how he struggles to throw it off. Similar will be the struggle for freedom of those who really understand that they are slaves of nature.Collection: Struggle
We reap what we sow. We are the makers of our own fate. None else has the blame, none has the praise.Collection: Fate
Books are good but they are only maps. Reading a book by direction of a man I read that so many inches of rain fell during the year. Then he told me to take the book and squeeze it between my hands. I did so and not a drop of water came from it. It was the idea only that the book conveyed. So we can get good from books, from the temple, from the church, from anything, so long as it leads us onward and upward.Collection: Rain
It's the coward who says, 'This is fate'...It's the strong who stands up & says 'I will make my fate'Collection: Strong
To get any reason out of the mass of incongruity we call human life, we have to transcend our reason, but we must do it scientifically, slowly, by regular practice, and we must cast off all superstition.Collection: Practice
My name should not be made prominent. It is my ideas that I want to see realized. The disciples of all the prophets have always inextricably mixed up the ideas of the Master with person, and at last killed the ideas for the person. The disciples of Sri Ramakrishna must guard against doing the same thing. Work for the idea, not the person.Collection: Names
The progress and civilisation of the human race simply mean controlling this nature.Collection: Mean
[The seers call him wise] whose every attempt is free, without any desire for gain, without any selfishness.Collection: Wise
Shri Krishna says: "Better die in your own path than attempt the path of another."Collection: Path
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.Collection: Hate
Prana, according to the Vedanta, is the principle of life. It is like ether, an omnipresent principle; and all motion, either in the body or anywhere else, is the work of this Prana. It is greater than Akasha, and through it everything lives. Prana is in the mother, in the father, in the sister, in the teacher, Prana is the knower.Collection: Mother
Only man makes Karma.Collection: Karma
We shall progress inch by inch.Collection: Progress
You cannot take away one atom of matter or one foot-pound of force. You cannot add to the universe one atom of matter or one foot-pound of force. As such, evolution does not come out of zero; then, where does it come from? From previous involution.Collection: Zero
But on the heights of the Himalayas I have a place where I am determined nothing shall enter except pure truth. There I want to work out this idea about which I have spoken to you today. There are an Englishman and an Englishwoman in charge of the place. The purpose is to train seekers of truth and to bring up children without fear and without superstition. They shall not hear about Christs and Buddhas and Shivas and Vishnus - none of these.Collection: Motivational
In countries where there is no marriage, there is no duty between husband and wife; when marriage comes, husband and wife live together on account of attachment; and that kind of living together becomes settled after generations; and when it becomes so settled, it becomes a duty.Collection: Marriage
We want Shraddhâ, we want faith in our own selves. Strength is life, weakness is death. 'We are the Âtman, deathless and free; pure, pure by nature. Can we ever commit any sin? Impossible!' - such a faith is needed. Such a faith makes men of us, makes gods of us. It is by losing this idea of Shraddha that the country has gone to ruin.Collection: Motivational
The book one must read to learn natural sciences is the book of nature. The book from which to learn religion is your own mind and heart.Collection: Book
You all know that certain things are necessary to make a religion. First of all, there is the book. The power of the book is simply marvellous! Whatever it be, the book is the centre round which human allegiance gathers. Not one religion is living today but has a book. With all its rationalism and tall talk, humanity still clings to the books. In your country every attempt to start a religion without a book has failed. In India sects rise with great success, but within a few years they die down, because there is no book behind them. So in every other country.Collection: Country
Patanjali, declares that the true secret of evolution is the manifestation of the perfection which is already in every being; that this perfection has been barred and the infinite tide behind is struggling to express itself. These struggles and competitions are but the results of our ignorance, because we do not know the proper way to unlock the gate and let the water in. This infinite tide behind must express itself; it is the cause of all manifestation.Collection: Struggle
In Tibet there is no marriage, and there is no jealousy, yet we know that marriage is a much higher state. The Tibetans have not known the wonderful enjoyment, the blessing of chastity, the happiness of having a chaste, virtuous wife, or a chaste, virtuous husband. These people cannot feel that. And similarly they do not feel the intense jealousy of the chaste wife or husband, or the misery caused by unfaithfulness on either side, with all the heart-burnings and sorrows which believers in chastity experience. On one side, the latter gain happiness, but on the other, they suffer misery too.Collection: Marriage
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.Collection: Inspirational
Know for certain that there is no power in the universe to injure us unless we first injure ourselves.Collection: Power
In this world we find that all happiness is followed by misery as its shadow. Life has its shadow, death. They must go together, because they are not contradictory, not two separate existences, but different manifestations of the same unit, life and death, sorrow and happiness, good and evil.Collection: Two
We have none of us seen a form which had not a beginning and will not have an end.Collection: Ends
Whatsoever has form must be the result of combinations of particles and requires something else behind it to move it.Collection: Moving
The world cares little for principles. They care for persons.Collection: Principles
Everything that has name and form must begin in time, exist in time, and end in time. These are settled doctrines of the Vedanta, and as such the heavens are given up.Collection: Names
From the highest god to the meanest grass, the same power is present in all - whether manifested or not. We shall have to call forth that power by going from door to door.Collection: Power
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.Collection: Spiritual
Man is not mind, he is soul.Collection: Men
Change is inherent in every form.Collection: Form
Everything which has name and form must die. If there are heavens with forms, these heavens must vanish in course of time; they may last millions of years, but there must come a time when they will have to go.Collection: Years
This is the work of Nâma-Rupa - name and form. Everything that has form, everything that calls up an idea in your mind, is within Maya; for everything that is bound by the laws of time, space, and causation is within Maya.Collection: Law
What is meant by cause? Cause is the fine state of the manifested state.Collection: Causes
All is bound by the law of causationCollection: Law
Something cannot be made out of nothing. Nor can something be made to go back to nothing.Collection: Causes
The cause being finite, the effect must be finite. If the cause is eternal the effect can be eternal, but all these causes, doing good work, and all other things, are only finite causes, and as such cannot produce infinite result.Collection: Causes
The finer is always the cause, the grosser the effect. So the external world is the effect, the internal the cause.Collection: World
The law of Karma is the law of causation.Collection: Karma
The subtle are the causes, the gross the effects.Collection: Causes
The wave is the same thing as the water, the effect is the cause in another formCollection: Water
There cannot be a cause without an effect, the present must have had its cause in the past and will have its effect in the future.Collection: Past
Every work has got to pass through hundreds of difficulties before succeeding. Those that persevere will see the light, sooner or later.Collection: Patience