Swami Vivekananda

"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."

"The will is not free—it is a phenomenon bound by cause and effect—but there is something behind the will which is free."

"The more we come out and do good to others, the more our hearts will be purified, and God will be in them."

"There is nothing beyond God, and the sense enjoyments are simply something through which we are passing now in the hope of getting better things."

"The moment I have realized God sitting in the temple of every human body, the moment I stand in reverence before every human being and see God in him — that moment I am free from bondage, everything that binds vanishes, and I am free."

"Our duty is to encourage every one in his struggle to live up to his own highest idea, and strive at the same time to make the ideal as near as possible to the Truth."

"That man has reached immortality who is disturbed by nothing material."

"You have to grow from the inside out. None can teach you, none can make you spiritual. There is no other teacher but your own soul."

"The goal of mankind is knowledge. . . . Now this knowledge is inherent in man. No knowledge comes from outside: it is all inside. What we say a man "knows," should, in strict psychological language, be what he "discovers" or "unveils"; what man "learns" is really what he discovers by taking the cover off his own soul, which is a mine of infinite knowledge."

"If money help a man to do good to others, it is of some value; but if not, it is simply a mass of evil, and the sooner it is got rid of, the better."

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

"To devote your life to the good of all and to the happiness of all is religion. Whatever you do for your own sake is not religion."

"It is the coward and the fool who says, This is my fate – so says the Sanskrit proverb. But it is the strong man who stands up and says, I will make my own fate. It is people who are getting old who talk of fate. Young men generally do not come to astrology."

"After so much austerity I have known that the highest truth is this: He is present in every being! These are all in manifold forms of him. There is no other God to seek for! He alone is worshipping God, who serves all beings!"

"It is our own mental attitude which makes the world what it is for us. Our thought make things beautiful, our thoughts make things ugly. The whole world is in our own minds. Learn to see things in the proper light. First, believe in this world — that there is meaning behind everything. Everything in the world is good, is holy and beautiful. If you see something evil, think that you are not understanding it in the right light. throw the burden on yourselves!"

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

"All the powers in the universe are already ours. It is we who have put our hands before our eyes and cry that it is dark."

"If faith in ourselves had been more extensively taught and practiced, I am sure a very large portion of the evils and miseries that we have would have vanished."

"Where can we go to find God if we cannot see Him in our own hearts and in every living being?"

"The Vedanta teaches that Nirvana can be attained here and now, that we do not have to wait for death to reach it. Nirvana is the realization of the Self; and after having once known that, if only for an instant, never again can one be deluded by the mirage of personality."

"The Vedanta recognizes no sin it only recognizes error. And the greatest error, says the Vedanta is to say that you are weak, that you are a sinner, a miserable creature, and that you have no power and you cannot do this and that."

"Never think there is anything impossible for the soul. It is the greatest heresy to think so. If there is sin, this is the only sin — to say that you are weak, or others are weak."

"Truth can be stated in a thousand different ways, yet each one can be true."

""I am the thread that runs through all these pearls," and each pearl is a religion or even a sect thereof. Such are the different pearls, and God is the thread that runs through all of them; most people, however, are entirely unconscious of it."

"“Comfort” is no test of truth; on the contrary, truth is often far from being “comfortable.”"

"“Face the brutes.” That is a lesson for all life — face the terrible, face it boldly. Like the monkeys, the hardships of life fall back when we cease to flee before them."

"A few heart-whole, sincere, and energetic men and women can do more in a year than a mob in a century."

"A tremendous stream is flowing toward the ocean, carrying us all along with it; and though like straws and scraps of paper we may at times float aimlessly about, in the long run we are sure to join the Ocean of Life and Bliss."

"All is the Self or Brahman. The saint, the sinner, the lamb, the tiger, even the murderer, as far as they have any reality, can be nothing else, because there is nothing else."

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

"All that is real in me is God; all that is real in God is I. The gulf between God and me is thus bridged. Thus by knowing God, we find that the kingdom of heaven is within us."

"All truth is eternal. Truth is nobody’s property; no race, no individual can lay any exclusive claim to it. Truth is the nature of all souls."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"As body, mind, or soul, you are a dream; you really are Being, Consciousness, Bliss (satchidananda). You are the God of this universe."

"As long as we believe ourselves to be even the least different from God, fear remains with us; but when we know ourselves to be the One, fear goes; of what can we be afraid?"

"As soon as I think that I am a little body, I want to preserve it, to protect it, to keep it nice, at the expense of other bodies; then you and I become separate."

"As soon as you know the voice and understand what it is, the whole scene changes. The same world which was the ghastly battlefield of maya is now changed into something good and beautiful."

"Astrology and all these mystical things are generally signs of a weak mind; therefore as soon as they are becoming prominent in our minds, we should see a physician, take good food, and rest."

"Be a hero. Always say, “I have no fear.” Tell this to everyone—“Have no fear.”"

"Be perfectly resigned, perfectly unconcerned; then alone can you do any true work. No eyes can see the real forces; we can only see the results. Put out self, forget it; just let God work, it is His business."

"Blows are what awaken us and help to break the dream. They show us the insufficiency of this world and make us long to escape, to have freedom."

"Both the forces of good and evil will keep the universe alive for us, until we awake from our dreams and give up this building of mud pies."

"Come out into the broad light of day, come out from the little narrow paths, for how can the infinite soul rest content to live and die in small ruts?"

"Come out into the universe of Light. Everything in the universe is yours, stretch out your arms and embrace it with love. If you every felt you wanted to do that, you have felt God."

"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."

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