1. When there is a conflict the heart and the brain, let the heart be followed.   2.A man of intellect can turn a devil, but never a man of heart.   3. Religion is not a theoretical need but a practical necessity.   4. Renunciation does not mean simply dispassion for the world. It means dispassion for the world and also longing for God.   5. There is no Misery where there is no want.   6. The secret of life is not enjoyment, but education through experience.   7. Every new through must create opposition.   8. Renunciation is the withdrawal of mind from other things and concentration it on God.   9. Every man who think ahead of his time is sure to be misunderstood.   10. In this short life there is no time for the exchange of compliments.   11. Do not wait to cross the river when the water had all run down.   12. The greatest sin is fear   13. Better the scolding of the wise the adulation of the fools.   14. If you love God’s creation more than God, you will be disillusioned.

  “The history of the world is the history of a few men who had faith in themselves.” “Him I call a Mahatman – great soul – whose heart bleeds for the poor, otherwise he is a duratman – wicked soul.” “We need to have three things: the heart to feel, the brain to conceive, the hand to work.” “Fill the brain with the highest thoughts, highest ideals, place them day and night before you, and out of that will come great work.” –Swami Vivekananda

Each work has to pass through these stages—ridicule, opposition, and then acceptance. Those who think ahead of their time are sure to be misunderstood.   If you think that you are bound, you remain bound; you make your own bondage. If you know that you are free, you are free this moment. This is knowledge, knowledge of freedom. Freedom is the goal of all nature.   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?   Your Atman is the support of the universe—whose support do you stand in need of? Wait with patience and love and strength. If helpers are not ready now, they will come in time. Why should we be in a hurry? The real working force of all great work is in its almost unperceived beginnings.   Learning and wisdom are superfluities, the surface glitter merely, but it is the heart that is the seat of all power. It is not in the brain but in the heart that the Atman, possessed of knowledge, power, and activity, has its seat.    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    Purity, patience, and perseverance are the three essentials to success and, above all, love.   If you want to have life, you have to die every moment for it. Life and death are only different expressions of the same thing looked at from different standpoints; they are the ...

 If the mind is intensely eager, everything can be accomplished—mountains can be crumbled into atoms.   Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life – think of it, dream of it, live on idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success.     Come out into the universe of Light. Everything in the universe is yours, stretch out your arms and embrace it with love. If you every felt you wanted to do that, you have felt God.   All knowledge that the world has ever received comes from the mind; the infinite library of the universe is in our own mind.   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 yourself. Therefore make your own future.   There is no help for you outside of yourself; you are the creator of the universe. Like the silkworm you have built a cocoon around yourself…. Burst your own cocoon and come out aw the beautiful butterfly, as the free soul. Then alone you will see Truth.   All love is expansion, all selfishness is contraction. Love is therefore the only law of life. He who loves lives, he who is selfish is dying. Therefore love for love’s sake, because it is law of life, just as you breathe to live.   Our duty is to encourage every one in his struggle to live up to his own highest idea, and strive at the same time to make the ideal as near as possible to the Truth.   Even the greatest ...

Our duty is to encourage every one in his struggle to live up to his own highest idea, and strive at the same time to make the ideal as near as possible to the Truth. Swami Vivekananda   Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life – think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success. Swami Vivekananda   That man has reached immortality who is disturbed by nothing material. Swami Vivekananda   The more we come out and do good to others, the more our hearts will be purified, and God will be in them. Swami Vivekananda   The will is not free – it is a phenomenon bound by cause and effect – but there is something behind the will which is free. Swami Vivekananda   The world is the great gymnasium where we come to make ourselves strong. Swami Vivekananda   Truth can be stated in a thousand different ways, yet each one can be true. Swami Vivekananda   We are what our thoughts have made us; so take care about what you think. Words are secondary. Thoughts live; they travel far. Swami Vivekananda   When an idea exclusively occupies the mind, it is transformed into an actual physical or mental state. Swami Vivekananda   Where can we go to find God if we cannot see Him in our own hearts and in every living being. Swami Vivekananda   You cannot believe in God until you believe in yourself. Swami Vivekananda   You have to grow from the inside out. None can teach you, none can make you spiritual. ...

All differences in this world are of degree, and not of kind, because oneness is the secret of everything. Swami Vivekananda   All the powers in the universe are already ours. It is we who have put our hands before our eyes and cry that it is dark. Swami Vivekananda   As different streams having different sources all mingle their waters in the sea, so different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to God. Swami Vivekananda   Condemn none: if you can stretch out a helping hand, do so. If you cannot, fold your hands, bless your brothers, and let them go their own way. Swami Vivekananda   External nature is only internal nature writ large. Swami Vivekananda   GOD is to be worshipped as the one beloved, dearer than everything in this and next life. Swami Vivekananda   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. Swami Vivekananda   If money help a man to do good to others, it is of some value; but if not, it is simply a mass of evil, and the sooner it is got rid of, the better. Swami Vivekananda   In one word, this ideal is that you are divine. Swami Vivekananda   Never think there is anything impossible for the soul. It is the greatest heresy to think so. If there is sin, this is the only sin; to say that you are weak, or others are weak. Swami Vivekananda      

“Comfort” is no test of truth; on the contrary, truth is often far from being “comfortable.”   “Face the brutes.” That is a lesson for all life face the terrible, face it boldly. Like the monkeys, the hardships of life fall back when we cease to flee before them.   “I do not want to get material life. I do not want sense-life but something higher.” That is renunciation. Then, by the power of meditation, undo the mischief that has been done.   “I am the thread that runs through all these pearls,” and each pearl is a religion or even a sect thereof. Such are the different pearls, and God is the thread that runs through all of them; most people, however, are entirely unconscious of it.   “The earth is enjoyed by heroes” this is the unfailing truth. Be a hero. Always say, “I have no fear.”   A few heart-whole, sincere, and energetic men and women can do more in a year than a mob in a century.   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.   All knowledge that the world has ever received comes from the mind; the infinite library of the universe is in our own mind.   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.   All truth is eternal. Truth is nobody’s property; no race, no individual can lay any exclusive claim to it. Truth is the nature of all souls.   Anything ...

“I am the thread that runs through all these pearls,” and each pearl is a religion or even a sect thereof. Such are the different pearls, and God is the thread that runs through all of them; most people, however, are entirely unconscious of it.   “I do not want to get material life, do not want the sense-life, but something higher.” That is renunciation. Then, by the power of meditation, undo the mischief that has been done.   “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.   “Comfort” is no test of truth; on the contrary, truth is often far from being “comfortable.”   “Face the brutes.” That is a lesson for all life—face the terrible, face it boldly. Like the monkeys, the hardships of life fall back when we cease to flee before them.   “I do not want to get material life. I do not want sense-life but something higher.” That is renunciation. Then, by the power of meditation, undo the mischief that has been done.   “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and everything else 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 ...

You cannot believe in God until you believe in yourself. When we really begin to live in the world, then we understand what is meant by brotherhood or mankind, and not before. External nature is only internal nature writ large. The world is the great gymnasium where we come to make ourselves strong. Feel like Christ and you will be a Christ; feel like Buddha and you will be a Buddha. It is feeling that is the life, the strength, the vitality, without which no amount of intellectual activity can reach God. The will is not free – it is a phenomenon bound by cause and effect – but there is something behind the will which is free. The more we come out and do good to others, the more our hearts will be purified, and God will be in them. There is nothing beyond God, and the sense enjoyments are simply something through which we are passing now in the hope of getting better things. The moment I have realized God sitting in the temple of every human body, the moment I stand in reverence before every human being and see God in him — that moment I am free from bondage, everything that binds vanishes, and I am free. Our duty is to encourage every one in his struggle to live up to his own highest idea, and strive at the same time to make the ideal as near as possible to the Truth. That man has reached immortality who is disturbed by nothing material. You have to grow from the inside out. None can teach you, none can make you spiritual. There is no other teacher but your own soul. The goal of mankind is knowledge. . . . Now this knowledge is inherent in man. No knowledge comes ...

“Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life – think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success that is way great spiritual giants are produced.”   “Never think there is anything impossible for the soul. It is the greatest heresy to think so. If there is sin, this is the only sin? To say that you are weak, or others are weak.”   “You have to grow from the inside out. None can teach you, none can make you spiritual. There is no other teacher but your own soul.”   “We are what our thoughts have made us; so take care about what you think. Words are secondary. Thoughts live; they travel far.”   “Where can we go to find God if we cannot see Him in our own hearts and in every living being.”   “You cannot believe in God until you believe in yourself.”   “The first sign of your becoming religious is that you are becoming cheerful”   “GOD of truth, be Thou alone my guide…”   “BY the study of different RELIGIONS we find that in essence they are one.”   “That man has reached immortality who is disturbed by nothing material.”   “External nature is only internal nature writ large.”   “GOD is to be worshipped as the one beloved, dearer than everything in this and next life.”   “The more we come out and do good to others, the more our hearts will ...