Bhagavad Gita Quote - 03

Man is made by his belief. As he believes, so he is.
The mind is restless and difficult to restrain, but it is subdued by practice.

There has never been a time when you and I have not existed, nor will there be a time when we will cease to exist. As the same person inhabits the body through childhood, youth, and old age, so too at the time of death he attains another body. The wise are not deluded by these changes.

Those who eat too much or eat too little, who sleep too much or sleep too little, will not succeed in meditation. But those who are temperate in eating and sleeping, work and recreation, will come to the end of sorrow through meditation.

Bhagavad Gita Quote - 02

Delusion arises from anger. The mind is bewildered by delusion. Reasoning is destroyed when the mind is bewildered. One falls down when reasoning is destroyed.

Consciousness is eternal it is not vanquished with the destruction of the temporary body.

Better indeed is knowledge than mechanical practice. Better than knowledge is meditation. But better still is surrender of attachment to results, because there follows immediate peace.

Neither in this world nor elsewhere is there any happiness in store for him who always doubts.

Bhagavad Gita Quote - 01

The person whose mind is always free from attachment, who has subdued the mind and senses, and who is free from desires, attains the supreme perfection of freedom from Karma through renunciation.

Governing sense, mind and intellect, intent on liberation, free from desire, fear and anger, the sage is forever free.

Vivekananda's Quote - 20

What! Those giants of old, the ancient Rishis, who never walked but strode, of whom if you were to think but for a moment you would shrivel up into a moth, they sir, had time and you have no time?

When we have become free, we need not go mad and throw up society and rush off to die in the forest or the cave; we shall remain where we were but we shall understand the whole thing. The same phenomena will remain but with a new meaning.

Vivekananda's Quote - 19

The weak, the fearful, the ignorant will never reach the Atman. You cannot undo, the effect must come, face it, but be careful never to do the same thing again. Give up the burden of all deeds to the Lord. Give all, both good and bad. Do not keep the good and give only the bad. God helps those who do not help themselves.

If faith in ourselves had been more extensively taught and practiced, I am sure a very large portion of the evils and miseries that we have would have vanished.

Vivekananda's Quote - 18

He who has conquered the internal nature controls the whole universe; it becomes his servant.

In Buddha we had the great, universal heart and infinite patience, making religion practical and bringing it to everyone’s door. In Shankaracharya we saw tremendous intellectual power, throwing the scorching light of reason upon everything. We want today that bright sun of intellectuality joined with the heart of Buddha, the wonderful infinite heart of love and mercy. This union will give us the highest philosophy. Science and religion will meet and shake hands. Poetry and philosophy will become friends.

Vivekananda's Quote - 17

We get caught. How? Not by what we give but by what we expect. We get misery in return for our love; not from the fact that we love, but from the fact that we want love in return. There is no misery where there is no want.

If faith in ourselves had been more extensively taught and practiced, I am sure a very large portion of the evils and miseries that we have would have vanished.

A mongoose is generally kept in a glass-case with a long chain attached to it, so that it may go about freely. When it scents danger as it wanders about, with one jump it goes into the glass-case. So is a Yogi in this world.

Vivekananda's Quote - 16

Sita is the name in India for everything that is good, pure, and holy; everything that in women we call woman.

Shri Krishna is the God of the poor, the beggar, the sinner, the son, the father, the wife, and of everyone. He enters intimately into all our human relations and makes everything holy and in the end brings us to salvation. He is the God who hides himself from the philosopher and the learned and reveals himself to the ignorant and the children. He is the God of faith and love and not of learning. With the Gopis, love and God were the same thing they knew him to be love incarnate.

Vivekananda's Quote - 15

Realize yourself. That is all there is to do. Know yourself as you are infinite spirit. That is practical religion. Everything else is impractical, for everything else will vanish.

That which is nearest is least observed. The Atman is the nearest of the near, therefore the careless and the unsteady mind gets no clue to it. But the person who is alert, calm, self-restrained, and discriminating ignores the external world and, diving more and more into the inner world, realizes the glory of the Atman and becomes great.

Samadhi is perfect absorption of thought into the Supreme Spirit, when one realizes. "I and my Father are one."

Vivekananda's Quote - 14

God is very merciful to those whom He sees struggling heart and soul for spiritual realization. But remain idle, without any struggle, and you will see that His grace will never come.

The power is with the silent ones, who only live and love and then withdraw their personality. They never say “me” and “mine”; they are only blessed in being instruments.

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.

Vivekananda's Quote - 13

What about this marvelous experience of standing alone, discarding all help, breasting the storms of life, of working without any sense of recompense, without any sense of putrid duty, and of working a whole life, joyful, free not goaded on to work like slaves by false human love or ambition? Nature grinds all of us. Keep count of the ounce of pleasure you get. In the long run, nature did her work through you, and when you die your body will make other plants grow. Yet we think all the time that we are getting pleasure ourselves. Thus the wheel goes round.

Where God is, there is no other. Where the world is, there is no God. These two will never unite. Like light and darkness. That is what I have understood from Christianity and the life of Jesus. Isn’t that also Buddhism? Isn’t that Hinduism? Isn’t that Islam? Isn’t that the teaching of all the great sages and teachers?

Vivekananda's Quote - 12

Tell the truth boldly, whether it hurts or not. Never pander to weakness. If truth is too much for intelligent people and sweeps them away, let them go; the sooner the better.

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.

Vivekananda's Quote - 11

The highest of all feminine types in India is mother, higher than wife. Wife and children may desert a man, but his mother never. Mother is the same or loves her child perhaps a little more. Mother represents colorless love that knows no barter, love that never dies. Who can have such love? Only mother, not son, nor daughter, nor wife.

To realize the spirit as spirit is practical religion. Everything else is good so far as it leads to this one grand idea. That realization is to be attained by renunciation, by meditation renunciation of all the senses, cutting the knots, the chains that bind us down to matter.

Vivekananda's Quote - 10

Evolution is in nature, not in the soul, evolution of nature, manifestation of the soul.

So long as religion was in the hands of a chosen few or of a body of priests, it was in the temples, it was in the churches, it was in the books, in dogmas, in ceremonials, forms, and rituals. When men have come to the real, universal, spiritual concept, then, and then alone, religion will become real and living; it will come into our very nature, live in every movement of the human being, it will penetrate every pore of society, and be infinitely more a power for good than it has ever been before.

Vivekananda's Quote - 09

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.

"Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and everything shall be added unto you." This is the one great duty, this is renunciation. Live for an ideal, and leave no place in the mind for anything else. Let us put forth all our energies to acquire that which never fails--our spiritual perfection. If we have true yearning for realization, we must struggle, and through struggle growth will come. We shall make mistakes, but they may be angels unawares.

Vivekananda's Quote - 08

Unborn and uncreated, without beginning and without end, deathless, birthless and omnipresent that is what I am; and all misery comes just because I think this little lump of clay is myself. I am identifying myself with matter and taking all the consequences.

The brave alone can afford to be sincere. Compare the lion and the fox

Put God behind everything human beings, animals, food, and work. Make this a habit.

Vivekananda's Quote - 07

There is only one sin and it is 'weakness'. When I was a boy, I read Milton’s Paradise Lost. The only good man I had any respect for was Satan. The only saint is that person who never weakens, faces everything, and determines die game.

Self-realization is to be attained by renunciation, by meditation renunciation of all the senses, cutting the knots, the chains that bind us down to matter.

Vivekananda's Quote - 06

All is the Self or Brahman. The saint, the sinner, the lamb, the tiger, even the murderer, as far as they have any reality, can be nothing else, because there is nothing else.

Bless people when they revile you. Think how much good they are doing by helping to stamp out the false ego. Hold fast to the real self. Think only pure thoughts, and you will accomplish more than a regiment of mere preachers. Out of purity and silence comes the word of power.

Purity, patience, and perseverance are the three essentials to success, and above all, love.

Vivekananda's Quote - 05

The will is not free - it is a phenomenon bound by cause and effect - but there is something behind the will, which is free

Whose meditation is real and effective? Who can really surrender to the will of God? Only the person whose mind has been purified by selfless work

Vivekananda's Quote - 04

In this external world, which is full of finite things, it is impossible to see and find the Infinite। The Infinite must be sought in that alone which is infinite, and the only thing infinite about us is that which is within us, our own soul. Neither the body, nor the mind, nor even our thoughts, nor the world we see around us, is infinite.

Our first duty is not to hate ourselves, because to advance we must have faith in ourselves first and then in God. Those who have no faith in themselves can never have faith in God.