1,842 Quotes by Swami Vivekananda

I have been asked many times, Why do you laugh so much and make so many jokes? I become serious sometimes-when I have a stomachache! The Lord is all blissfulness. He is the reality behind all that exists. He is the goodness, the truth in everything. You are His incarnations. That is what is glorious. The nearer you are to Him, the less you will have occasions to cry or weep. The further we are from Him, the more will long faces come. The more we know of Him, the more misery vanishes.

Renunciation is always the ideal of every race; only other races do not know what they are made to do by nature unconsciously.

Whenever power is used for evil, it becomes diabolical; it must be used for good only.

There are men who practice Titiksha, and succeed in it. There are men who sleep on the banks of the Ganga in the midsummer sun of India, and in winter float in the waters of the Ganga for a whole day; they do not care. Men sit in the snow of the Himalayas, and do not care to wear any garment. What is heat? What is cold? Let things come and go, what is that to me, I am not the body.

The Upanishads do not reveal the life of any teacher, but simply teach principles.

The gift of knowledge is the highest gift in the world.

Business is business, that is, you must do everything promptly; delay and shuffling won't do.

What do you gain in heaven? You become gods, drink nectar, and get rheumatism. There is less misery there than on earth, but also less truth.

The Vedanta teaches men to have faith in themselves first. As certain religions of the world say that a man who does not believe in a Personal God outside of himself is an atheist, so the Vedanta says, a man who does not believe in himself is an atheist. Not believing in the glory of our own soul is what the Vedanta calls atheism.