Quotes from Swami Vivekananda

Virtue is the only friend which follows us even beyond the grave. Everything else ends with death.

Therefore the highest utility for mankind is to find this happiness in the Spirit.

those who believe in God should pray — not for money, not for health, nor for heaven; pray for knowledge and light; every other prayer is selfish.

First hear, then understand, and then, leaving all distractions, shut your minds to outside influences, and devote yourselves to developing the truth within you. (I. 177)

Although devotion is to be given to many institutes and teachers, the essence is to be taken from them all, as the bee takes the essence from many flowers.- Samkhya, 4.13, an Eastern scripture

It is attachment, identification, which makes us miserable. That is the secret: To think that I am the spirit and not the body, and that the whole of this universe with all its relations, with all its good and all its evil, is but a series of paintings — scenes on a canvas — of which I am the witness.

After a time man finds that it is not happiness, but knowledge, towards which he is going, and that both pleasure and pain are great teachers, and that he learns as much from evil as from good.

Be contented with the things of the present. The cows and the dogs are, and so are all animals; and that is what makes them animals. So if man rests content with the present and gives up all search into the beyond, mankind will have to go back to the animal plane again.

the common saying has it, we think that man "lives to eat" and not "eats to live". We are continually making this mistake; we are regarding nature as ourselves and are becoming attached to it; and as soon as this attachment comes, there is the deep impression on the soul, which binds us down and makes us work not from freedom but like slaves.

The world is ready to give up its secrets if we only know how to knock, how to give it the necessary blow. The strength and force of the blow come through concentration. There is no limit to the power of the human mind. The more concentrated it is, the more power is brought to

Yama, Niyama, Âsana, Prânâyâama, Pratyâhâra, Dhâranâ, Dhyâna, and Samâdhi are the eight limbs of Yoga.

Reason can go only to a certain extent, beyond that it cannot reach. The circle within which it runs is very very limited indeed. Yet at the same time, we find facts rush into this circle. Like the coming of comets certain things come into this circle; it is certain they come from outside the limit, although our reason cannot go beyond.

Internal and external purification, contentment, mortification, study, and worship of God are the Niyamas.

The end and aim of all science is to find the unity, the One out of which the manifold is being manufactured, that One existing as many.

Truth requires no prop to make it stand.

The bottom of a lake we cannot see, because its surface is covered with ripples. It is only possible for us to catch a glimpse of the bottom, when the ripples have subsided, and the water is calm.

He (God) reveals himself to the pure heart.

To the Yogi everything is bliss, every human face that he sees brings cheerfulness to him. That is the sign of a virtuous man.

Inequality is the very basis of creation. At the same time the forces struggling to obtain equality are as much a necessity of creation as those which destroy it.

the doctrine of non-attachment.

Matter is the permanent possibility of sensations," said John Stuart Mill. It is only the suggestion that is outside.

Let the mind be cheerful but calm. Never let it run into excesses, because every excess will be followed by a reaction.

On the philosophic side the disciples of the Great Master dashed themselves against the eternal rocks of the Vedas and could not crush them, and on the other side they took away from the nation that eternal God to which every one, man or woman, clings so fondly. And the result was that Buddhism had to die a natural death in India. At the present day there is not one who calls oneself a Buddhist in India, the land of its birth. But

Hinduism cannot live without Buddhism, nor Buddhism without Hinduism. Then realise what the separation has shown to us, that the Buddhists cannot stand without the brain and philosophy of the Brahmins, nor the Brahmin without the heart of the Buddhist.