Book detail: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda is presented as a focused source page for quotations connected with this book, collection, transcript, or source record.
This book includes a wide range of Swami Vivekananda's teachings on spirituality, philosophy, and social issues, offering insights into his thoughts on various aspects of life and the human condition.
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“How to transcend the senses without disturbing the health is what we want to learn.”
Source: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda
“No negative, all positive, affirmative. I am, God is, everything is in me. I will manifest health, purity, knowledge, whatever I want.”
Source: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda
“Pay particular attention to your health, but too much coddling of the body will, on the contrary, also spoil the health.”
Source: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda
“The sign of vigour, the sign of life, the sign of hope, the sign of health, the sign of everything that is good, is strength. As long as the body lives, there must be strength in the body, strength in the mind, [and strength] in the hand.”
Source: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda
“We never want Him. We say, "Lord, give me a fine house." We want the house, not Him. "Give me health! Save me from this difficulty!" When a man wants nothing but Him, [he gets Him].”
Source: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda
“You must all pay attention to your health first.”
Source: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda
“You must keep a strict eye on your health; let everything else be subordinated to that.”
Source: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda
“A Sannyasin cannot belong to any religion, for his is a life of independent thought, which draws from all religions; his is a life of realisation, not merely of theory or belief, much less of dogma.”
Source: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda
“Everything is fraught with fear: Renunciation alone is fearless.”
Source: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda
“Renunciation, and renunciation alone, is the real secret, the Mulamantra, of all Realisation.”
Source: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda
“Renunciation - non-resistance - non-destructiveness - are the ideals to be attained through less and less worldliness, less and less resistance, less and less destructiveness. Keep the ideal in view and work towards it. None can live in the world without resistance, without destruction, without desire. The world has not come to that state yet when the ideal can be realised in society.”
Source: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda
“Self-love is the first teacher of self-renunciation.”
Source: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda
“There is nothing so high as renunciation of self.”
Source: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda
“Doing good to others is the # one great Universal Religion”
Source: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda
“Every idea has to become broad till it covers the whole of this world, every aspiration must go on increasing till it has engulfed the whole of humanity, nay, the whole of life, within its scope.”
Source: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda
“As long as we require someone else to make us happy, we are slaves.”
Source: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda
“In the world take always the position of the giver. Give everything and look for no return. Give love, give help, give service, give any little thing you can, but keep out barter. Make no conditions and none will be imposed on you. Let us give out of our own bounty, just as God gives to us.”
Source: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda
“You yourselves are the Being you are seeking.”
Source: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda
“Ishvara is the highest manifestation of the Absolute Reality, or in other words, the highest possible reading of the Absolute by the human mind. Creation is eternal, and so also is Ishvara.”
Source: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda
“Knowledge of the Absolute depends upon no book, nor upon anything; it is absolute in itself. No amount of study will give this knowledge; is not theory, it is realization. Cleanse the dust from the mirror, purify your own mind, and in a flash you know that you are Brahman.”
Source: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda
“The Absolute does not change, or re-evolve.”
Source: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda
“The Absolute is the material of both God and man.”
Source: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda
“The sea calm is the Absolute; the same sea in waves is Divine Mother.”
Source: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda
“The sum total of all the cells in an organism is one person; so each soul is like one cell and the sum of them is God, and beyond that is the Absolute.”
Source: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda
“You and I and everything in the universe are that Absolute, not parts, but the whole. You are the whole of that Absolute, and so are all others, because the idea of part cannot come into it.”
Source: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda
“Christians are always wanting God to give them something. They appear as beggars before the throne of the Almighty.”
Source: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda
“Only love for the Supreme Lord is true Bhakti. Love for any other being, however great, is not Bhakti. The "Supreme Lord" here means Ishvara, the concept of which transcends what you in the West mean by the personal God. "He from whom this universe proceeds, in whom it rests, and to whom it returns, He is Ishvara, the Eternal, the Pure, the All-Merciful, the Almighty, the Ever-Free, the All-Knowing, the Teacher of all teachers, the Lord who of His own nature is inexpressible Love."”
Source: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda
“That is the great fact which you ought to remember. We are the children of the Almighty, we are sparks of the infinite, divine fire. How can we be nothings? We are everything, ready to do everything, we can do everything, and man must do everything.”
Source: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda
“The Bhakta (devotee) renounces all little loves for the almighty and omnipresent love.”
Source: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda
“The sum total or Ishwara may be said to be All-good, Almighty, and Omniscient. These are obvious qualities, and need no argument to prove, from the very fact of totality.”
Source: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda
“As soon as we react, we become slaves. A man blames me, and I immediately react in the form of anger. A little vibration which he created made me a slave.”
Source: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda
“Good works are continually being undone by the tons of hatred and anger which are being poured out on the world.”
Source: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda
“I am neither man nor angel. I have no sex nor limit. I am knowledge itself. I am He. I have neither anger nor hatred. I have neither pain nor pleasure. Death or birth I never had. For I am Knowledge Absolute, and Bliss Absolute. I am He, my soul, I am He!”
Source: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda
“If you are angry, and then happy, the next moment the anger passes away. Out of that anger you manufactured the next state. These states are always interchangeable. Eternal happiness and misery are a child's dream.”
Source: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda
“The devil comes in many guises-anger in the form of justice-passion in the form of duty. When it first comes, the man knows and then he forgets. Just as your pleaders' conscience; at first they know it is all Badmashi (roguery), then it is duty to their clients; at last they get hardened.”
Source: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda
“There is no such thing as "righteous" anger or justifiable killing.”
Source: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda
“Thinking of objects, attachment to them is formed in a man. From attachment longing, and from longing anger grows.”
Source: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda
“Whom anger chains, can ever pass thro' Maya's gates.”
Source: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda
“. . . it is difficult for Europeans to appreciate the sentiment. Other nations kill animals by wholesale and kill one another; they exist in a sea of blood. A European said that the reason why in India animals were not killed was because it was supposed that they contained the spirits of ancestors. This reason was worthy of a savage nation who are not many steps from the brute.”
Source: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda
“Men may have given millions of dollars and fed rats and cats, as some do in India. They say that men can take care of themselves, but the poor animals cannot. . .”
Source: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda
“Everything can be sacrificed for truth, but truth cannot be sacrificed for anything.”
Source: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda
“Religion is realization; not talk, nor doctrine, nor theories however beautiful they may be. It is being and becoming, not hearing, or acknowledging; it is the whole soul becoming what it believes.”
Source: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda
“Work unto death! I am with you, and when I am gone, my spirit will work with you. This life comes and goes; wealth, fame, enjoyments are only of a few days. It is better, far better to die on the field of duty, preaching the truth, than to die like a worldly worm. Advance!”
Source: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda
“Be moral. Be brave. Be a heart-whole man, strictly moral, brave unto desperation. Don't bother your head with religious theories. Cowards only sin, brave men never, no, not even in mind.”
Source: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda
“Every one wants to command, and no one wants to obey; and this is owing to the absence of that wonderful brahmacharya system of yore. First, learn to obey. The command will come by itself. Always first learn to be a servant, and then you will be fit to be a master.”
Source: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda
“Be not afraid of anything. You will do marvellous work. It is fear that is the great cause of misery in the world. It is fear that is the greatest of all superstitions. It is fear that is the cause of all our woes, and it is fearlessness that brings heaven even in a moment. Therefore, "arise, awake and stop not until the goal is reached.”
Source: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda
“I direct my attention to the individual, to make him strong, to teach him that he himself is divine, and I call upon men to make themselves conscious of this divinity within. That is really the ideal --conscious or unconscious --of every religion.”
Source: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda
“If you dare declare that you are free, free you are this moment. If you say you are bound, bound you will remain.”
Source: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda
“If you have knowledge and see a man weak, do not condemn him. Go to his level and help him if you can. He must grow.”
Source: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda
“All work is simply to bring out the power of the mind which is already there, to wake up the soul. The power is inside every man, so is knowing; the different works are like blows to bring them out, to cause these giants to wake up.”
Source: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda