Swami Vivekananda Quotes

The organs are the horses, the mind is the rein, the intellect is the charioteer, the soul is the rider, and the body is the chariot.

This craving for health, wealth, long life, and the like - the so - called good - is nothing but an illusion.

Until we realise ourselves as the Absolute, we cannot attain to deliverance.

No more materialism, no more this egoism, I must become spiritual.

The best guide in life is strength.

Each nation has a main current in life; in India it is religion. Make it strong and the waters on either side must move along with it.

Have faith in your destiny

The Tapas and the other hard Yogas that were practiced in other Yugas do not work now. What is needed in this Yuga is giving, helping others.

Do you have the belief in you to move on, even when the whole world is against you, with swords in their hands?

If the poor boy cannot come to education, education must go to him

We must get out of materialism.

This is the line of life, this is the line of growth, and this is the line of well-being in India - to follow the track of religion.

Know it for certain that without steady devotion for the Guru and unflinching patience and perseverance, nothing is to be achieved. You must have strict morality.

Desire can be eradicated from the roots by firmly imbibing the four attributes of: Jnan, Atmanishtha, Vairagya, Dharma and the full fledged devotion to God.

Even the lowest of the low have the Atman (Soul) inside, which never dies and never is born, immortal, without beginning or end, the all pure, omnipotent and omnipresent Atman!

In all our Yogas this renunciation is necessary. This is the stepping-stone and the real centre and the real heart of all spiritual culture - renunciation. This is religion - renunciation.

Charity never faileth.

Neither idealists nor materialists are right; we must take both idea and expression.

Renunciation is the very basis upon which ethics stands.

Form and formless are intertwined in this world. The formless can only be expressed in form and form can only be thought with the formless.

To believe that mind is all, that thought is all is only a higher materialism.

According to the Hindu way of thinking, marriage is rather a duty than a privilege.

Our first duty is not to hate ourselves, because to advance we must have faith in ourselves first and then in God. Those who have no faith in themselves can never have faith in God.

Infinite strength is religion and God.

The idea of God grew side by side with the idea of materialism.

Marriage is not for individual happiness, but for the welfare of the nation and the caste.

You must all pay attention to your health first.

Expansion is life. Love is expansion. Love is therefore the only law of life.

If you can think that infinite power, infinite knowledge and indomitable energy lie within you, and if you can bring out that power, you also can become like me.

Give love, give help, give service, and give any little thing you can, but keep out barter.

The ideal of womanhood in India is motherhood - that marvellous, unselfish, all - suffering, ever - forgiving mother.

Perfect life is a contradiction in terms. Therefore we must always expect to find things not up to our highest ideal. Knowing this, we are bound to make the best of everything.

As soon as extreme attachment comes, a man loses himself, he is no more master of himself, he is a slave.

Cowards only sin, brave men never, no, not even in mind.

Each soul is potentially divine.

Astrology and all these mystical things are generally signs of a weak mind

Man stands in materialism; you and I are materialists. Our talking about God and Spirit is good; but it is simply the vogue in our society to talk thus: we have learnt it parrot-like and repeat it.

Immediately you will be perfect, you will become God.

Great occasions rouse even the lowest of human beings to some kind of greatness, but he alone is the really great man whose character is great always, the same wherever he be.

Renunciation, and renunciation alone, is the real secret, the Mulamantra, of all Realisation.

Renunciation is always the ideal of every race; only other races do not know what they are made to do by nature unconsciously.

Renunciation is in our blood.

The greatest help to spiritual life is meditation. In meditation we divest ourselves of all material condition and feel our divine nature.

One point of difference between Hinduism and other religions is that in Hinduism we pass from truth to truth-from a lower truth to a higher truth-and never from error to truth.

Superstitions are all materialism, because they are all based on the consciousness of body, body, body. No spirit there. Spirit has no superstitions - it is beyond the vain desires of the body.

When I asked God for Brains and Brawn, He gave me Puzzles in life to Solve.

This is the great lesson that we are here to learn through myriads of births and heavens and hells - that there is nothing to be asked for, desired for, beyond one's spiritual Self (atman).

Materialism prevails in Europe today. You may pray for the salvation of the modern sceptics, but they do not yield, they want reason.

Materialism and all its miseries can never be conquered by materialism.

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.