Inspiring Quotes by Swami Vivekananda
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The mind is but the subtle part of the body. You must retain great strength in your mind and words.

The guide, the guru, the leader, the teacher, has passed away; the boy, the student, the servant, is left behind.

This idea of body is a simple superstition. It is superstition that makes us happy or unhappy. It is superstition caused by ignorance that makes us feel heat and cold, pain and pleasure.

Know it for certain that without steady devotion for the Guru and unflinching patience and perseverance, nothing is to be achieved. You must have strict morality.

We are responsible for what we are, and whatever we wish ourselves to be, we have the power to make ourselves.

The powers of the mind are like the rays of the sun when they are concentrated they illumine.

Forget not that thy marriage, thy wealth, thy life are not for sense-pleasure, are not for thy individual personal happiness.

There will never be a perfectly good or bad world, because the very idea is a contradiction in terms.

You of the West are practical in business, practical in great inventions, but we of the East are practical in religion. You make commerce your business; we make religion our business.

All motion, either in the body or anywhere else, is the work of this Prana.

Prana is the driving power of the world, and can be seen in every manifestation of life.

Every individual is a center for the manifestation of a certain force. This force has been stored up as the resultant of our previous works, and each one of us is born with this force at our back.

Have faith in yourselves, be proud of your ancestors, instead of being ashamed of them.

Stand as a rock; you are indestructible. You are the Self, the God of the universe.

Eka-Nishtha or devotion to one ideal is absolutely necessary for the beginner in the practice of religious devotion.

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

No doubt it is an evil to be bound by laws, but it is necessary at the immature stage to be guided by rules; in other words, as the Master used to say that the sapling must be hedged round, and so on.

Service to man is service to god.

God is present in every Jiva; there is no other God besides that. Who serves Jiva serves God indeed.

The happiest is the man who is not at all selfish.

Materialism prevails in Europe today. You may pray for the salvation of the modern sceptics, but they do not yield, they want reason.

The progress of the world through all its evils making it fit for the ideals, slowly but surely.

The sign of life is strength and growth.

Motion is the sign of life.

Space-time-causation, or name-and-form, is what is called Maya.

Everything that we know is within our universe, and everything within our universe is moulded by the conditions of space, time, and causation.

Happiness presents itself to man, wearing the crown of sorrow on its head. He who welcomes it must also welcome sorrow.

The world is a demon. It is a kingdom of which the puny ego is king. Put it away and stand firm.

Consciously or unconsciously, we are all striving for perfection. Every being must attain to it.

In spirituality the Americans are very inferior to us. But their society is very superior to ours.

Do not blame any supernatural being, neither be hopeless and despondent, nor think we are in a place from which we can never escape unless someone comes and lends us a helping hand.

Know that every time you feel weak, you not only hurt yourself but also the cause. Infinite faith and strength are the only conditions of success.

This is a great fact: strength is life; weakness is death. Strength is felicity, life eternal, immortal; weakness is constant strain and misery, weakness is death.

We are for ever trying to make our weakness look like strength, our sentiment like love, our cowardice like courage, and so on.

God is not to be reached by the weak. Never be weak. You have infinite strength within you. How else will you conquer anything? How else will you come to God?

The Tapas and the other hard Yogas that were practiced in other Yugas do not work now. What is needed in this Yuga is giving, helping others.

This external worship of images has, however, been described in all our Shastras as the lowest of all the low forms of worship. But that does not mean that it is a wrong thing to do.

No study has taken so much of human energy, whether in times past or present, as the study of the soul, of God, and of human destiny.

In the English character, the give and take policy, the business principle of the trader, is principally inherent.

Liberty in thought and action is the only condition of life, growth and well-being: Where it does not exist, the man, the race, and the nation must go down.

Take off the veil of hypnotism which you have cast upon the world, send not out thoughts and words of weakness unto humanity.

Even luxuries are arranged according to ideas and ideals, to make them reflect as much of thought-life as possible -- and this is Art.

My countrymen should have nerves of steel, muscles of iron, and minds like thunderbolt.

Have faith that you are all, my brave lads, born to do great things! Let not the barks of puppies frighten you, no, not even the thunderbolts of heaven, but stand up and work!

All great undertakings are achieved through mighty obstacles. Keep up the deepest mental poise. Take not even the slightest notice of what puerile creatures may be saying against you.

So long as we perceive this world in motion, we have to conceive will behind it.

The Vedanta teaches men to have faith in themselves first.

Anything that brings spiritual, mental, or physical weakness, touch it not with the toes of your feet.

Not believing in the glory of our own soul is what the Vedanta calls atheism.

Comfort is no test of truth; on the contrary, truth is often far from being comfortable.

The first sign of your becoming religious is that you are becoming cheerful.

Perfection does not come from belief or faith. Talk does not count for anything. Parrots can do that. Perfection comes through the disinterested performance of action.

We are ever free if we would only believe it, only have faith enough. You are the soul, free and eternal, ever free, ever blessed. Have faith enough and you will be free in a minute.

We reap what we sow. We are the makers of our own fate. None else has the blame, none has the praise.

To succeed, you must have tremendous perseverance, tremendous will.

There is no help for you, outside yourself; You are the creator of the universe.

The essence of Vedanta is that there is but one Being and that every soul is that Being in full, not a part of that Being.

The correct meaning of the statement The Vedas are beginningless and eternal is that the law or truth revealed by them is permanent and changeless.

On this basic -- being right and doing right the whole world can unite.