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Inspirational Quotations

by RightAttitudes.com

Inspirational Quotes by Swami Vivekananda (Indian Hindu Monk, Mystic)

Inspirational Quotations by Swami Vivekananda (Indian Hindu Monk, Mystic)

Swāmī Vivekānanda (1863–1902,) born Narendra Nath Datta, is one of the most admired spiritual leaders of India. He was the chief disciple of the 19th-century Hindu mystic Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and the driving force behind the Ramakrishna Mission and Neo-Hinduism.

Born in Calcutta in British India, Swāmī Vivekānanda was an associate of the Brahmo Samāj, a Hindu reform movement, and training to be a lawyer. When he stumbled upon Ramakrishna, Swāmī Vivekānanda had a forceful religious experience and became one of Ramakrishna’s disciples. After his master’s death, he became a saṃnyāsin and founded the Ramakrishna Math and the Ramakrishna Mission. He became a mendicant, traveled the length and breadth of India on foot, meditating and propagating his interpretation of Ramakrishna’s teachings.

Swāmī Vivekānanda proposed that, underneath their seeming diversity, all religions are one. His appeal for universal tolerance attracted much attention at the Chicago World Parliament of Religions in 1893, where he introduced Hinduism with an inspiring speech that began, “Sisters and brothers of America…, it fills my heart with joy unspeakable to rise in response to the warm and cordial welcome which you have given us.”

Swāmī Vivekānanda was a crucial figure in the introduction of the Indian philosophies of Vedānta and Yoga to the Western world and is credited with raising interfaith awareness, bringing Hinduism to the status of a major world religion during the late 19th century. He was a significant force in the revival of Hinduism in India and contributed to the concept of nationalism in colonial India.

In India, Swāmī Vivekānanda is widely regarded as the patriot saint of modern India and a source of inspiration. His notable literary works include Karma Yoga (1896,) Raja Yoga (1896,) and The East and the West (1909.)

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Swami Vivekananda

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Inspirational Quotes by Swami Vivekananda (Indian Hindu Monk, Mystic)

Fill the brain with high thoughts, highest ideals, place them day and night before you, and out of that will come great work.
—Swami Vivekananda

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

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

Understanding human nature is the highest knowledge, and only by knowing it can we know God. It is also a fact that the knowledge of God is the highest knowledge, and only by knowing God can we understand human nature.
—Swami Vivekananda

With love there is no painful reaction; love only brings a reaction of bliss; if it does not, it is not love; it is mistaking something else for love.
—Swami Vivekananda

If a man thinks good thoughts and does good works, the sum total of these impressions will be good; and they, in a similar manner, will force him to do good even in spite of himself.
—Swami Vivekananda

We have to go back to philosophy to treat things as they are. We are suffering from our own karma. It is not the fault of God. What we do is our own fault, nothing else. Why should God be blamed?
—Swami Vivekananda

It is our mental attitude which makes the world what it is for us. Our thoughts make things beautiful, our thoughts make things ugly. The whole world is in our own minds.
—Swami Vivekananda

Stand upon the Self, only then can we truly love the world. Take a very high stand; knowing our universal nature, we must look with perfect calmness upon all the panorama of the world.
—Swami Vivekananda

Do you not see how everybody works? Nobody can be altogether at rest; ninety-nine per cent of mankind work like slaves, and the result is misery; it is all selfish work. Work through freedom! Work through love! The word “love” is very difficult to understand; love never comes until there is freedom… If you buy a slave and tie him down in chains and make him work for you, he will work like a drudge, but there will be no love in him. So when we ourselves work for the things of the world as slaves, there can be no love in us, and our work is not true work.
—Swami Vivekananda

Good and bad are both bondages of the soul … If we do not attach ourselves to the work we do, it will not have any binding effect on our soul… This is the one central idea in the Gita: work incessantly, but be not attached to it.
—Swami Vivekananda

Don’t look back—forward, infinite energy, infinite enthusiasm, infinite daring, and infinite patience—then alone can great deeds be accomplished.
—Swami Vivekananda

Truth, Purity, Unselfishness
wherever these are present,
there is no power below or above the Sun
to crush the possessor thereof.
—Swami Vivekananda

The powers of the mind should be concentrated and the mind turned back upon itself; as the darkest places reveal their secrets before the penetrating rays of the sun, so will the concentrated mind penetrate its own innermost secrets.
—Swami Vivekananda

The highest manifestation of strength is to keep ourselves calm and on our own feet.
—Swami Vivekananda

To define God is grinding what is already ground; for He is the only being we know.
—Swami Vivekananda

First get rid of the delusion “I am the body”, then only will we want real knowledge.
—Swami Vivekananda

Religion is the manifestation of the Divinity already in man.
—Swami Vivekananda
Topics: Religion

Who makes us ignorant? We ourselves. We put our hands over our eyes and weep that it is dark.
—Swami Vivekananda

Strength is Life, Weakness is Death.
Expansion is Life, Contraction is Death.
Love is Life, Hatred is Death.
—Swami Vivekananda

This is the first lesson to learn: be determined not to curse anything outside, not to lay the blame upon anyone outside, but stand up, lay the blame on yourself. You will find that is always true. Get hold of yourself.
—Swami Vivekananda

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

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.
—Swami Vivekananda

If we really want to be blessed, and make others blessed, we must go deeper. The first step is not to disturb the mind, not to associate with persons whose ideas are disturbing.
—Swami Vivekananda

Never are we nearer the Light than when the darkness is deepest.
—Swami Vivekananda

Work and worship are necessary to take away the veil, to lift off the bondage and illusion.
—Swami Vivekananda

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.
—Swami Vivekananda

Those who work at a thing heart and soul not only achieve success in it but through their absorption in that they also realize the supreme truth—Brahman. Those who work at a thing with their whole heart receive help from God.
—Swami Vivekananda

This life is short, the vanities of the world are transient, but they alone live who live for others, the rest are more dead than alive. If all of us think for the society and the country, all our problems will be solved.
—Swami Vivekananda

Stand up, be bold, be strong. Take the whole responsibility on your own shoulders, and know that you are the creator of your own destiny. All the strength and succor you want is within yourselves. Therefore, make your own future.
—Swami Vivekananda

Whenever we attain a higher vision, the lower vision disappears of itself.
—Swami Vivekananda

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.
—Swami Vivekananda

Stand as a rock; you are indestructible. You are the Self (atman), the God of the universe.
—Swami Vivekananda

The Self when it appears behind the universe is called God. The same Self when it appears behind this little universe—the body—is the soul.
—Swami Vivekananda

Those who grumble at the little thing that has fallen to their lot to do will grumble at everything. Always grumbling they will lead a miserable life…. But those who do their duty putting their shoulder to the wheel will see the light, and higher and higher duties will fall to their share.
—Swami Vivekananda

The essential thing in religion is making the heart pure; the Kingdom of Heaven is within us, but only the pure in heart can see the King. While we think of the world, it is only the world for us; but let us come to it with the feeling that the world is God, and we shall have God.
—Swami Vivekananda

This life is a hard fact; work your way through it boldly, though it may be adamantine; no matter, the soul is stronger.
—Swami Vivekananda

Perfection is always infinite. We are the Infinite already. You and I, and all beings, are trying to manifest that infinity.
—Swami Vivekananda

Good Motive, Sincerity and Infinite love can conquer the world. One single soul possessed of these virtues can destroy the dark designs of millions of hypocrites and brutes.
—Swami Vivekananda

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?
—Swami Vivekananda

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