Top 1714 Quotes & Sayings by Swami Vivekananda - Page 4

Do not wait for anybody or anything. Do whatever you can. Build your hope on none.

The difference between God and the devil is in nothing except in unselfishness and selfishness. The devil knows as much as God, is as powerful as God; only he has no holiness that makes him a devil. Apply the same idea to the modern world: excess of knowledge and power, without holiness, makes human beings devils.

Music alone can take you to the Highest!

The moment you fear, you are nobody.

Let a man go down as low as possible; there must come a time when out of sheer desperation he will take an upward curve and will learn to have faith in himself.

You must keep a strict eye on your health; let everything else be subordinated to that.

Even the greatest fool can accomplish a task if it be after his heart. But the intelligent man is he who can convert every work into one that suits his taste. No work is petty. Everything in this world is like a banyan seed, which, though appearing tiny as a mustard seed, has yet the gigantic banyan tree latent with it. He indeed is intelligent who notices this and succeeds in making all work truly great.

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.

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.

Desire, ignorance, and inequality—this is the trinity of bondage.

We know how often in our lives through laziness and cowardice we give up the battle and try to hypnotise our minds into the belief that we are brave.

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.

Shri Ramakrishna use to say, "As Long as I Live, so long do I learn". That man or that society which has nothing to learn is already in the jaws of death.

Be moral. Be brave. Be a heart-whole man, strictly moral, brave unto desperation. Don't bother your head with religious theories. Cowards only sin, brave men never, no, not even in mind.

The earth is enjoyed by heroes”—this is the unfailing truth. Be a hero. Always say, “I have no fear.

There is no virtue higher than non-injury.

He who has no faith in himself can never have faith in God.

Is enjoyment the goal of life? Were it so, it would be a tremendous mistake to become a man at all. What man can enjoy a meal with more gusto than the dog or the cat ? Go to a menagerie and see the [wild animals] tearing the flesh from the bone. Go back and become a bird! . . . What a mistake then to become a man! Vain have been my years - hundreds of years - of struggle only to become the man of sense-enjoyments.

Renunciation is the very basis upon which ethics stands.

If a thing happens once, it can happen again. If any human being has ever realised perfection, we too can do so. If we cannot become perfect here and now, we never can in any state or heaven or condition we may imagine.

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

Every wave of passion restrained is a balance in your favor. It is therefore good policy not to return anger for anger, as with all true morality.

The present is determined by our past actions, and the future by the present.

The greatest sin is to think yourself weak

Ishvara is the highest manifestation of the Absolute Reality, or in other words, the highest possible reading of the Absolute by the human mind. Creation is eternal, and so also is Ishvara.

Everything that has form must have a beginning and an end.

Have faith in yourselves, be proud of your ancestors, instead of being ashamed of them.

The greatest sin is to think that you are weak. No one is greater: realize that you are Brahman. Nothing has power except what you give it.

If you can get absolutely still for just one moment, you have reached the goal.

The body cannot be the soul.

Great work requires great and persistent effort for a long time. ... Character has to be established through a thousand stumbles.

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

Things do not grow better; they remain as they are. It is we who grow better, by the changes we make in ourselves.

Each man has a mission in life, which is the result of all his infinite past Karma.

Ask nothing; want nothing in return. Give what you have to give; it will come back to you, but do not think of that now.

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

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

Education is not filling the mind with a lot of facts. Perfecting the instrument and getting complete mastery of my own mind [is the ideal of education].

All power is within you. Believe in that,do not believe that you are weak... Stand up and express the Divinity within you.

We do not look at our own faults; the eyes do not see themselves, they see the eyes of everybody else. We human beings are very slow to recognise our own weakness, our own faults, so long as we can lay the blame upon somebody else.

The great secret of true success, of true happiness, is this: the man or woman who asks for no return, the perfectly unselfish person, is the most successful.

What power is higher than the power of purity?

It is not God's fault. It is our fault that we suffer. Whatever we sow we reap.

Be grateful that the poor man is there, so that by making a gift to him you are able to help yourself

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.

Books are only made so that they may point the way to a higher life; but no good results unless the path is trodden with unflinching steps!

. . . If you are really my children, you will fear nothing, stop at nothing. You will be like lions. We must rouse India and the whole world. No cowardice.

Three things are necessary to make every man great,every nation great1.Conviction of the powers of goodness.2.Absence of jealousy and suspicion.3.Helping all who are trying to be and do good.

A golden chain is as much a chain as an iron one. Shri Ramakrishna used to say that, to pick out one thorn which has stuck into the foot, another thorn is requisitioned, and when the thorn is taken out, both are thrown away. So the bad tendencies are to be counteracted by the good ones, but after that, the good tendencies have also to be conquered.

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.

Have faith in yourself. You people were once the Vedic Rishis. Only, you have come in different forms, that's all. I see it clear as daylight that you all have infinite power in you. Rouse that up; arise, arise - apply yourselves heart and soul, gird up your loins.

Even luxuries are arranged according to ideas and ideals, to make them reflect as much of thought-life as possible - and this is Art.

Believe in yourself and the world will be at your feet.

I am inclined to believe that one who is a coward will be born after death as an insect or a worm, that there is no salvation for a coward even after millions of years of penance.

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

Man always is perfect, or he never could become so; but he had to realise it.

Society does not go down because of the activities of criminals, But because of the inactivities of the good people.

Persevere on, my brave lads, We have only just begun. Never despond! Never say enough!

The benefits of knowledge can only be realized in practice.

If you have infinite patience and perseverance, success is bound to come. No mistake in that.