Swami Vivekananda

Look upon every man, woman, and everyone as God. You cannot help anyone, you can only serve: serve the children of the Lord, serve the Lord Himself, if you have the privilege.

Let us worship the spirit in spirit, standing on spirit. Let the foundation be spirit, the middle spirit, the culmination spirit.

Let us not depend upon the world for pleasure.

Learning and wisdom are superfluities, the surface glitter merely, but it is the heart that is the seat of all power. It is not in the brain but in the heart that the Atman, possessed of knowledge, power, and activity, has its seat.

Learning and wisdom are superfluities, the surface glitter merely, but it is the heart that is the seat of all power.

Knowledge can only be got in one way, the way of experience; there is no other way to know.

Karma is the eternal assertion of human freedom. If we can bring ourselves down by our karma, surely it is in our power to raise ourselves by our own karma.

It is the patient building of character, the intense struggle to realize the truth, which alone will tell in the future of humanity.

It is the cheerful mind that is persevering. It is the strong mind that hews its way through a thousand difficulties.

It is feeling that is the life, the strength, the vitality, without which no amount of intellectual activity can reach God.

Is there any sex-distinction in the Atman (Self)? Out with the differentiation between man and woman—all is Atman! Give up the identification with the body, and stand up!

Impurity is a mere superimposition under which your real nature has become hidden. But the real you is already perfect, already strong.

If you want to have life, you have to die every moment for it. Life and death are only different expressions of the same thing looked at from different standpoints; they are the falling and the rising of the same wave, and the two form one …

If you think that you are bound, you remain bound; you make your own bondage. If you know that you are free, you are free this moment. This is knowledge, knowledge of freedom. Freedom is the goal of all nature.

If there is one word that you find coming out like a bomb from the Upanishads, bursting like a bombshell upon masses of ignorance, it is the word “fearlessness.”

If superstition enters, the brain is gone.

If a piece of burning charcoal be placed on a man’s head, see how he struggles to throw it off. Similar will be the struggle for freedom of those who really understand that they are slaves of nature.

I, for one, thoroughly believe that no power in the universe can withhold from anyone anything he really deserves.

I fervently wish no misery ever came near anyone; yet it is that alone that gives us an insight into the depths of our lives, does it not? In our moments of anguish, gates barred forever seem to open and let in many a flood of light.

However we may receive blows, and however knocked about we may be, the Soul is there and is never injured. We are that Infinite.

Hold to the idea, “I am not the mind, I see that I am thinking, I am watching my mind act,” and each day the identification of yourself with thoughts and feelings will grow less, until at last you can entirely separate yourself from the …

He whom the sages have been seeking in all these places is in our own hearts; the voice that you heard was right, says Vedanta, but the direction you gave to the voice was wrong.

Have you got the will to surmount mountain-high obstructions? If the whole world stands against you sword in hand, would you still dare to do what you think is right?

Great work requires great and persistent effort for a long time. … Character has to be established through a thousand stumbles.