Swami Vivekananda
Man is the nearest approach to Brahman.Collection: Men
Even forgiveness, if weak and passive, is not true: fight is better. Forgive when you could bring legions of angels to the victory.Collection: Forgiveness
That intense faith in another world, that intense hatred for this world, that intense power of renunciation, that intense faith in God, that intense faith in the immortal soul, is in you. I challenge anyone to give it up. You cannot. You may try to impose upon me by becoming materialists, by talking materialism for a few months, but I know what you are; if I take you by the hand, back you come as good theists as ever were born. How can you change your nature?Collection: Hands
How long do you remember that it is the Lord who is making you work? But then, by repeatedly analysing like that, you will come to a state when the ego will vanish and in its place the Lord will come in. Then you will be able to say with justice "Thou, Lord, art guarding all my actions from within." But, my friend, if the ego occupies all the space within your heart, where forsooth will there be room enough for the Lord to come in? The Lord is verily absent!Collection: Art
These practices - non-killing, truthfulness, non-stealing, chastity, and non-receiving - are to be practised by every man, woman, and child; by every soul, irrespective of nation, country, or position.Collection: Country
Do you think there is any other means of achieving progress except through Rajas?Collection: Mean
Let new India arise out of peasants' cottage, grasping the plough, out of huts, cobbler and sweeper.Collection: India
One link in a chain explains the infinite chain.Collection: Links
Man cannot be satisfied by wealth. Man cannot go beyond his nature, no more than you can jump out of your body.Collection: Men
We have seen that our vigour, our strength, nay, our national life is in our religion.Collection: Life Is
What makes a man stand up and work? Strength. Strength is goodness, weakness is sin.Collection: Strength
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.Collection: Motivational
Motion is the sign of life.Collection: Signs Of Life
Out of Mahat comes universal egoism.Collection: Ego
I do not call it religion so long as it is confined to books and dogmas.Collection: Book
The bane of sects, especially in Bengal, is that if any one happens to have a different opinion, he immediately starts a new sect, he has no patience to wait.Collection: Patience
It is clear to us that, for good or for evil, our vitality is concentrated in our religion. You cannot change it. You cannot destroy it and put in its place another.Collection: Evil
I love my nation, I cannot see you degraded, weakened any more than you are now. Therefore I am bound for your sake and for truth's to cry, "Hold!" and to raise my voice against this degradation of my race. Give up these weakening mysticism and be strong.Collection: Motivational
There is no power on earth which can be kept long confined within a narrow limit. It cannot be kept compressed too long to allow of expansion at a subsequent period.Collection: Power
Stand upon the Atman, then only can we truly love the world. Take a very, very high stand; knowing our universal nature, we must look with perfect calmness upon all the panorama of the world.Collection: Knowing
The effect is delusion, and therefore the cause must be delusion.Collection: Causes
Each person tries to hold himself hss and lay the blame upon somebody or something else, or even on bad luck.Collection: Luck
We are all the time, from our childhood, trying to lay the blame upon something outside ourselves. We are always standing up to set right other people, and not ourselves. If we are miserable, we say, "Oh, the world is a devil's world." We curse others and say, "What infatuated fools!" But why should we be in such a world, if we really are so good? If this is a devil's world, we must be devils also; why else should we be here? "Oh, the people of the world are so selfish!" True enough; but why should we be found in that company, if we be better? Just think of that.Collection: Selfish
Slavery is slavery. The chain of gold is quite as bad as the chain of iron. Is there a way out?Collection: Iron
You nourish your minds by reading books. There is no good in doing that unless you hold it also as a sacrifice to the whole world. For the whole world is one; you are rated a very insignificant part of it, and therefore it is right for you that you should serve your millions of brothers rather than aggrandise this little selfCollection: Brother
Business is business, that is, you must do everything promptly; delay and shuffling won't do.Collection: Business
Preaching has always been the business of the Asiatics. The Western people are grand in organisation, social institutions, armies, governments, etc.; but when it comes to preaching religion, they cannot come near the Asiatic, whose business it has been all the time, and he knows it, and he does not use too much machinery.Collection: Business
We can form no idea of the millions of pounds that are spent every year in the making of dress in the West. The dress-making business has become a regular science. What colour of dress will suit with the complexion of the girl and the colour of her hair, what special feature of her body should be disguised, and what displayed to the best advantage-these and many other like important points, the dressmakers have seriously to consider. Again, the dress that ladies of very high position wear, others have to wear also, otherwise they lose their caste! This is FASHION.Collection: Girl
An atheist can be charitable but not religious. But the religious man must be charitable.Collection: Religious
Is there any sex-distinction in the Atman (Self)? Out with the differentiation between man and woman—all is Atman! Give up the identification with the body, and stand up!Collection: Sex
Only when creation stops can we find the Absolute. The Absolute is in the soul, not in creation. So by stopping creation, we come to know the Absolute.Collection: Soul
Bold words and bolder deeds are what we want. Awake, awake, great ones! The world is burning with misery. Can you sleep?Collection: Motivational
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.Collection: Giving
We can never lose what is really ours. Who can lose his being? Who can lose his very existence? If I am good, it is the existence first, and then that becomes colored with the quality of goodness. If I am evil, it is the existence first, and that becomes colored with the quality of badness. That existence is first, last, and always; it is never lost but ever present.Collection: Evil
We want to lead mankind to the place where there is neither the Vedas, nor the Bible, nor the Koran; yet this has to be done by harmonizing the Vedas, the Bible, and the Koran.Collection: Vedas
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 "fearlessness."Collection: Inspiring
Chârvâkas, a very ancient sect in India, were rank materialists.Collection: Rvs
What can be my highest idea of forgiveness? Nothing beyond myself. Which of you can jump out of your own bodies? Which of you can jump out of your own minds? Not one of you.Collection: Forgiveness
One ounce of practice is worth a thousand pounds of theory.Collection: Practice
You have heard that Christ said, 'My words are spirit and they are life'. So are my words spirit and life; they will burn their way into your brain and you will never get away from them!Collection: Jesus
Cowards only sin, brave men never, no, not even in mind.Collection: Inspirational
Faith, faith, faith in ourselves, faith, faith in God, this is the secret of greatness.If you have faith in all the three hundred and thirty millions of your mythological Gods, and in all the Gods which foreigners have now and again introduced into your midst, and still have no faith in yourselves, there is no salvation for you.Collection: Faith
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.Collection: Religious
What is marriage but the renunciation of unchastity? The savage does not marry. Man marries because he renounces.Collection: Marriage
Renunciation means that none can serve both God and Mammon.Collection: Jesus
See how the Ganga flows by and what a nice building! I like this place. This is the ideal kind of place for a Math. (in Belur, West Bengal).Collection: Nice
"The fool, dwelling on the bank of the Ganga, digs a well for water!" Such are we! Living in the midst of God - we must go and make images.Collection: Dwelling