Quotes from Swami Vivekananda

THE WHOLE LIFE IS A SUCCESSION OF DREAMS; MY AMBITION IS TO BE A CONSCIOUS DREAMER, THATS ALL.

Just as in the case of electricity, the modern theory is that the power leaves the dynamo and completes the circle back to the dynamo, so with hate and love; they must come back to the source. Therefore do not hate anybody, because that hatred which comes out from you, must, in the long run, come back to you. If you love, that love will come back to you, completing the circle.

When you step beyond thought and intellect and all reasoning, then you have made the first step towards God; and that is the beginning of life.

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

take Buddha. The central idea [is] sacrifice.

What is now wanted is a combination of the greatest heart with the highest intellectuality, of infinite love with infinite knowledge.

He works for work's sake. "Work for work's sake. Worship for worship's sake.

All who have actually attained any real religious experience never wrangle over the form in which the different religions are expressed. They know that the soul of all religions is the same and so they have no quarrel with anybody just because he or she does not speak in the same tongue.

Anything that brings spiritual, mental, or physical weakness, touch it not with the toes of your feet.

He is trying to justify himself, but he cannot fool Krishna.

The ideal man is he who, in the midst of the greatest silence and solitude, finds the intensest activity, and in the midst of the intensest activity finds the silence and solitude of the desert. He has learnt the secret of restraint, he has controlled himself.

Anything that is secret and mysterious in these systems of Yoga should be at once rejected. 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.

all religions alike, from the lowest fetishism to the highest absolutism, are but so many attempts of the human soul to grasp and realise the Infinite.

We may talk and reason all our lives, but we shall not understand a word of truth, until we experience it ourselves.

Just as inequality is necessary for creation itself, so the struggle to limit it is also necessary. If there were no struggle to become free and get back to God, there would be no creation either. It is the difference between these two forces that determines the nature of the motives of men. There will always be these motives to work, some tending towards bondage and others towards freedom. This

Let miseries come in millions of rivers and happiness in hundreds! I am no slave to misery! I am no slave to happiness!

We are allowed to worship him. Stand in that reverent attitude to the whole universe, and then will come perfect non attachment

man may see a great deal of difference between grass and a little tree, but if you mount very high, the grass and the biggest tree will appear much the same. So, from the standpoint of the highest ideal, the lowest animal and the highest man are the same. If

Stand up and be strong! No fear. No superstition. Face the truth as it is!

There is only one sin. That is weakness.

We can read all the Vedas, and yet will not realize anything, but when we practice their teachings, then we attain to that state which realizes what the scriptures say, which penetrates where neither reason nor perception nor inference can go, and where the testimony of others cannot avail.

Work for work's sake. There are some who are really the salt of the earth in every country and who work for work's sake, who do not care for name, or fame, or even to go to heaven.

We must be Bright and Cheerful, long faces do not make Religion

You may sit down and listen to me by the hour every day, but if you do not practice, you will not get one step further. It all depends on practice.