What is civilisation? It is the feeling of the divine within. When you find time, repeat these ideas to yourself and desire freedom. That is all. Deny everything that is not God. Assert everything that is God.
― Swami Vivekananda
Excessive hilarity is quite as objectionable as too much of sad seriousness, and all religious realisation is possible only when the mind is in a steady, peaceful condition of harmonious equilibrium.
― Swami Vivekananda
Be free; hope for nothing from anyone. I am sure if you look back upon your lives you will find that you were always vainly trying to get help from others which never came. All the help that has come was from within yourselves.
― Swami Vivekananda
Truth is strengthening. Truth is purity, truth is all-knowledge; truth must be strengthening, must be enlightening, must be invigorating.
― Swami Vivekananda
Mark me, then and then alone you are a Hindu when the very name sends through you a galvanic shock of strength. Then and then alone you are a Hindu when every man who bears the name, from any country, speaking our language or any other language, becomes at once the nearest and the dearest to you.
― Swami Vivekananda
Travelling is the best thing in life. I am afraid I shall die if made to stick to one place for a long time. Nothing like a nomadic life!
― Swami Vivekananda
If you squeeze a bit of this marble, it will drip drops of royal love and its sorrow.” Further he observed, “It takes really six months to study a square inch of its interior works of beauty.
― Swami Vivekananda
There is only one element in life which is worth having at any cost — and it is love. Love immense and infinite, broad as the sky and deep as the ocean. This is the one great gain in life. Blessed is he who gets it.
― Swami Vivekananda
The real study is that by which we realise the Unchangeable, and that is neither by reading, nor believing, nor reasoning, but by superconscious perception and Samadhi.
― Swami Vivekananda
Come to God any way you can; only come. But in coming do not push anyone down.
― Swami Vivekananda
For a man to constantly do good without caring for the approbation of his fellow men is indeed the highest sacrifice man can perform.
― Swami Vivekananda
Be thankful for all food, it is Brahman. His universal energy is transmuted into our individual energy and helps us in all that we do.
― Swami Vivekananda
This is the land of Religion Eternal. The country has fallen, no doubt, but will as surely rise again, and that upheaval will astound the world.
― Swami Vivekananda
Go on working at top speed. Never fear! I, too, have determined to work. The body must go, no mistake about that. Why then let it go in idleness? It is better to wear out than rust out.
― Swami Vivekananda
Whether one is Christian, or Jew, or Gentile, it does not matter. 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
The ancient Hindus were wonderful scholars, veritable living encyclopaedias. They said, “Knowledge in books and money in other people’s hands is like no knowledge and no money at all.”
― Swami Vivekananda
When once you consider an action, do not let anything dissuade you. Consult your heart, not others, and then follow its dictates.
― Swami Vivekananda
What can the universe give us more than our own soul? Possessing that, we possess all.
― Swami Vivekananda
The lamp is constantly burning out, and that is its life. If you want to have life, you have to die every moment for it.
― Swami Vivekananda
We know we have to give up money and all other things when we die, and yet, see the amount of energy we can put forth for them. But we, the same human beings, should we not put forth a thousandfold more strength and energy to acquire that which never fades, but which remains to us for ever? For this is the one great friend, our own good deeds, our own spiritual excellence, that follows us beyond the grave. Everything else is left behind here with the body.
― Swami Vivekananda
