Quotes from Swami Vivekananda

The forms have value only so far as they are expressions of the life within. If they have ceased to express life, crush them out without mercy.

My ideal, indeed, can be put into a few words, and that is: to preach unto mankind their divinity, and how to make it manifest in every movement of life.

In one word, this ideal is that you are divine.

Throw aside your scriptures in the Ganga and teach the people first the means of procuring their food and clothing, and then you will find time to read to them the scriptures.

Everything that we know is within our universe, and everything within our universe is moulded by the conditions of space, time, and causation.

Neither object nor time off, put up with what comes.

Modern Hinduism, modern Jainism, and Buddhism branched off at the same time. For some period, each seemed to have wanted to outdo the others in grotesqueness and humbuggism.

Through the grace of the Almighty Power, it is sure to manifest itself in time.

Space-time-causation, or name-and-form, is what is called Maya.

God is to be worshipped as the one beloved, dearer than everything in this and next life.

All differences in this world are of degree, and not of kind, because oneness is the secret of everything.

God is the ever active providence, by whose power systems after systems are being evolved out of chaos, made to run for a time and again destroyed.

Every attempt to solve the laws of causation, time, and space would be futile, because the very attempt would have to be made by taking for granted the existence of these three.

Those giants of old, the ancient Rishis, who never walked but strode, of whom if you were to think but for a moment you would shrivel up into a moth, they sir, had time-and you have no time!

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.

God is cruel and not cruel. He is all being and not being at the same time. Hence He is all contradictions. Nature also is nothing but a mass of contradictions.

Meditation means the mind is turned back upon itself. The mind stops all the thought-waves and the world stops. Your consciousness expands. Every time you meditate you will keep your growth.

The Indian idea is that the soul is formless. Whatever is form must break some time or other.

The one who actually succeeds in making himself believe that he is having a good time is the man of splendid physical health.

The very idea of an infinite in place would be a contradiction in terms, as a place must begin and continue in time.

Delusion will vanish as the light becomes more and more effulgent, load after load of ignorance will vanish, and then will come a time when all else has disappeared and the sun alone shines.

Internal and external nature, mind and matter, are in time and space, and are bound by the law of causation.

The following story is one which he related recently regarding the practice of fault - finding among creeds: A frog lived in a well. It had lived there for a long time. . . .

Any time you attempt to make a God beyond Christ, you murder the whole thing. God alone can worship God.