QUOTES OF SWAMI VIVEKANANDA

•  BHAKTHI
• To obtain Bhakti, seek the company of holy men who have Bhakti, and read books like the Gita and the Imitation of Christ; always think of the attributes of God.(Notes taken down in Madras 1892-1893)
• Bhakti is a higher thing higher than even desiring heaven. The idea of heaven is of a place of intensified enjoyment. How can that be God?
  (Notes from a lecture On Bhakti Yoga)
• Bhakti-Yoga is the path of systematised devotion for the attainment of union with the Absolute. It is the easiest and surest path to religion or realisation.
• When love to God is revealed and is all, this world appears like a drop.

BOOK LEARNING

Even he who has seen only a spook is more spiritual than book-learned pundits.

BRAHMIN

The Brahmin has done great things for India ; he is doing great things for India , and he is destined to do still greater things for India in the future.
(Attributed to Swamiji,  (December,1892), K. Sundarama Iyer's Reminiscences of Swami Vivekananda)

BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM

• Go thou and follow Him, who was born and gave His life for others five hundred times before He attained the vision of the Buddha!
  (CWSN 1: 114)
• Buddha's Sermon on the Mount was, "As thou thinkest, so art thou."
  (Notes from a Lecture On Bhakti Yoga)
• A religion invented by the Kshattriyas as a crushing rejoinder to Brahminism!
  (Notes of some wanderings with the Swami Vivekananda by Sister Nivedita)
• I am the servant of the servants of the servants of Buddha. Who was there ever like Him ?—the Lord—who never performed one action for Himself—with a heart that embraced the whole world ! So full of pity that He—prince and monk—would give his life to save a little goat ! So loving that He sacrificed himself to the hunger of a tigress !—to the hospitality of a pariah and blessed him.
  (Notes of some wanderings with the Swami Vivekananda by Sister Nivedita)

CHASTITY

• Brahmacharya should burn like the fire of God within the veins.
• No force can be created; it can only be directed. Therefore, we must learn to control the grand powers that are already in our hands, and by will power make them spiritual, instead of merely animal. Thus it is clearly seen that chastity is the cornerstone of all morality and of all religion.
  (C.W. 8.46)
• Chastity is the basis of all religions.
  (CW 6: Notes of Class talks and lectures - Concentration)
• Chastity is the life of a nation. Do you not find in history that the first death-sign of a nation has been unchastity? When that has entered, the end of the race is in sight.

COMPETITION

The day will come when men will study history from a different light and find that competition is neither the cause nor the effect, simply a thing on the way, not necessary to evolution at all.

CONCENTRATION

• The mind has to be made malleable like clay. Just as clay sticks wherever you throw it, so the mind must be made to dwell upon whatever object you concentrate it.
• Concentration is the essence of all knowledge, nothing can be done without it.

CONTENTMENT

From contentment comes superlative happiness.
(Raja Yoga: Patanjali's Yoga Aphorisms. Chapter II - Concentration: Its practice)

COURAGE

The brave alone can afford to be sincere. Compare the lion and the fox. (Notes taken down in Madras 1892-93)

DARJEELING

It is the most picturesque city in the world.
(Letter to Mrs. Bull - April 4 1898)

DECISION-MAKING

When once you consider an action, do not let anything dissuade you. Consult your heart, not others, and then follow its dictates.
(Reminisence of Alice Hansbrough)

DEVOTION

The devotion to God as seen in every religion is divided into two parts: the devotion which works through forms and ceremonies and through words, and that which works through love.
(Notes from a lecture Lessons on Bhakti yoga)

EAST AND WEST

Social life in the West is like a peal of laughter; but underneath, it is a wail. It ends in a sob. The fun and frivolity are all on the surface: really it is full of tragic intensity. Now here, it is sad and gloomy on the outside, but underneath are carelessness and merriment.
(CW8: Sayings and Utterances)

EDUCATION

• We want that education by which character is formed, strength of mind is increased, the intellect is expanded, and by which one can stand on one's own feet.
• Education is the manifestation of the perfection already in man.
  (CV 4: Prose - What we believe in)

ETHICS

• Renunciation is the very basis upon which ethics stands. There never was an ethical code preached which had not renunciation for its basis.
  
• Ethics always says, "Not I, but thou." Its motto is, "Not self, but non-self." The vain ideas of individualism, to which man clings when he is trying to find that Infinite Power or that Infinite Pleasure through the senses, have to be given up--say the laws of ethics. You have to put yourself last, and others before you. The senses say, "Myself first." Ethics says, "I must hold myself last." Thus, all codes of ethics are based upon this renunciation; destruction, not construction, of the individual on the material plane.
  

FAITH IN ONESELF

The old religions said that he was an atheist who did not believe in God. The new religion says that he is the atheist who does not believe in himself.

FANATICS AND FANATICISM

In ninety cases out of a hundred, fanatics must have bad livers, or they are dyspeptics, or are in some way diseased. By degrees even physicians will find out that fanaticism is a kind of disease.
(Notes from a lecture On Fanaticism)

FLESH

The flesh and the devil are but degrees of difference from God Himself.

FREEDOM

• All our struggle is for freedom. We seek neither misery nor happiness, but freedom, freedom alone.
  (From a lecture Nov 1895; as quoted by Sister Nivedita)
• The constitutional belief in freedom is the basis of all reasoning.

FRIENDSHIP

Friendship with many is good at a distance.
(Letter to Sister Nivedita dated 29th July 1897)

GOD

• The Impersonal God seen through the mists of sense is personal.
  (CWSN 1: 120)
• Some imaginations help to break the bondage of the rest. The whole universe is imagination, but one set of imaginations will cure another set. Those that tell us that there is sin and sorrow and death in the world are terrible. But the other set — thou art holy, there is God, there is no pain — these are good, and help to break the bondage of the others. The highest imagination that can break all the links of the chain is that of the Personal God.
  (Notes from a lecture On Bhakti Yoga)
• Can you see your own eyes? God is like that. He is as close as your own eyes. He is your own, even though you can't see Him.
  (Said to seventeen-year-old Ralph Wyckoff)
  

GODS AND GODDESSES

These gods are not merely symbols! They are the forms that the Bhaktas have seen!
(CWSN 1: 120)

GOOD AND EVIL

Who can say that God does not manifest Himself as Evil as well as Good ? But only the Hindu dares to worship Him in the evil.
(Notes of some wanderings with the Swami Vivekananda by Sister Nivedita)

GREATNESS

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.

HEROES

Have you never thought of the hearts of the heroes? How they were great, great, great — and soft as butter?"
(CWSN 1: 172)

HINDUISM

• The three essentials of Hinduism are belief in God, in the Vedas as revelation, in the doctrine of Karma and transmigration.
  (Notes taken down in Madras 1892-93)
• My religion is one of which Christianity is an offshoot and Buddhism a rebel child.
  (Notes taken down in Madras 1892-93)
• There is no new religious idea preached anywhere which is not found in the Vedas.
  (Notes taken down in Madras 1892-93)
• The Vedas contain not only the means how to obtain Bhakti but also the means for obtaining any earthly good or evil. Take whatever you want.
  (Notes taken down in Madras 1892-93)

HOUSEHOLDERS

Never forget, to say to yourself, and to teach to your children, as the difference between a firefly and the blazing sun, between the infinite ocean and a little pond, between a mustard-seed and the mountain of Meru, such is the difference between the householder and the Sannyasin.
(Notes of some wanderings with the Swami Vivekananda by Sister Nivedita)

INDIVIDUALITY

The real individuality is that which never changes and will never change; and that is the God within us.

ITALY

Greatest of the countries of Europe, land of religion and of art; alike of imperial organization and of Mazzini ;—mother of ideas, of culture, and of freedom !
(Notes of some wanderings with the Swami Vivekananda by Sister Nivedita)

JAPAN

• Their country is their religion. The national cry is Dai Nippon , Banzai!. Live long, great Japan ! The country before and above everything else. No sacrifice is too great for maintaining the honour and integrity of the country.
  (Reminiscences by Nagendra Nath Gupta)

JESUS

Had I lived in Palestine, in the days of Jesus of Nazareth, I would have washed his feet, not with my tears, but with my heart's blood!
(CWSN 1: 189)

JNANA (True Knowledge)

• Jnâna (knowledge) is "creedlessness"; but that does not mean that it despises creeds. It only means that a stage above and beyond creeds has been gained.
  (Notes from a lecture On Jnana Yoga)

JUDGING OTHERS

• In criticising another, we always foolishly take one especially brilliant point as the whole of our life and compare that with the dark ones in the life of another. Thus we make mistakes in judging individuals.
  (Notes from a lecture On Bhakti Yoga)

KARMA

No one can get anything unless he earns it. This is an eternal law. (Karma in its effect on character)

KARMA YOGA

• "I want sappers and miners in the army of religion. So, boys, set yourselves to the task of training your muscles. For ascetics, mortification is all right, for workers, well-developed bodies, muscles of iron and nerves of steel."

KRISHNA

• This was the great work of Krishna : to clear our eyes and make us look with broader vision upon humanity in its march upward and onward. His was the first heart that was large enough to see truth in all, his the first lips that uttered beautiful words for each and all.
  
• Krishna talks of himself as God, as Christ does. He sees the Deity in himself. And he says, "None can go a day out of my path. All have to come to me. Whosoever wants to worship in whatsoever form, I give him faith in that form, and through that I meet him. ..."(Gita, IV. 12.) His heart is all for the masses.
  (From his lecture Krishna)
• Shri Krishna is the God of the poor, the beggar, the the sinner, the son, the father, the wife, and of everyone. He enters intimately into all our human relations and makes everything holy and in the end brings us to salvation. He is the God who hides himself from the philosopher and the learned and reveals himself to the ignorant and the children. He is the God of faith and love and not of learning. With the Gopis, love and God were the same thing — they knew Him to be love incarnate.
  (Notes taken down in Madras 1892-93)

LEADERSHIP

I am persuaded that a leader is not made in one life. He has to be born for it. For the difficulty is not in organisation and making plans; the test, the real test, of the leader, lies in holding widely different people together along the line of their common sympathies. And this can only be done unconsciously, never by trying.
(CW8: Sayings and Utterances)

LIBERTY

• To care only for spiritual liberty and not for social liberty is a defect, but the opposite is a still greater defect. Liberty of both soul and body is to be striven for.
  (Notes from a lecture Hindu and Greek)
• This life is a tremendous assertion of freedom; and this obedience to law, carried far enough, would make us simply matter — either in society, or in politics, or in religion. Too many laws are a sure sign of death. Wherever in any society there are too many laws, it is a sure sign that that society will soon die.
  (Notes from a lecture Law and Freedom)

LIFE

• Life is but a dream of death.
  (CV 6: Notes of Class talks and lectures: How to become free)
• Always free on the spiritual plane; never free on the mental and physical — hence the struggle.
  (quoted by Josephine MacLeod)

LOVE

Pure love has no motive. It has nothing to gain.