Swami Vivekananda: Use (page 2)

“The varieties of religious belief are an advantage, since all faiths are good, so far as they encourage us to lead a religious life. The more sects there are, the more opportunities there are for making a successful appeal to the divine instinct in all of us.”

Swami Vivekananda

Pearls of Wisdom

Life , Faith , Success

“The less passion there is, the better we work. The calmer we are, the better for us and the more the amount of work we can do. When we let loose our feelings, we waste so much energy, shatter our nerves, disturb our minds, and accomplish very little work.”

Swami Vivekananda

Pearls of Wisdom

Feeling , Passion

“If all India stands up and takes all the mud that is at the bottom of the Indian Ocean and throws it up against the Western countries, it will not be doing an infinitesimal part of that which you are doing to us.”

Swami Vivekananda

Hindus and Christians http://www.ramakrishnavivekananda.info/vivekananda/volume_8/notes_of_class_talks_and_lectures/hindus_and_christians.htm (Detroit, February 21, 1894) Quoted from Goel, S. R. (1996). History of Hindu-Christian encounters, AD 304 to 1996. Ch. 13

Parting , Country

“We must overcome difficulty by constant practice. We must learn that nothing can happen to us unless we make ourselves susceptible to it.”

Swami Vivekananda

Pearls of Wisdom

Learning

“The highest truth is this: God is present in all beings. They are His multiple forms. There is no other God to seek.... It is a man-making religion that we want.... Give up these weakening mysticisms, and be strong.... For the next fifty years. … let all other gods disappear from our minds. This is the only God that is awake, our own race, everywhere His hands, everywhere His feet, everywhere His ears; He covers everything.... The first of all worships is the worship of those all around us. … He alone serves God who serves all other beings.”

Swami Vivekananda

Quoted from Will Durant, Our Oriental Heritage.

God , Religion , Strong , Truth

“No one ever landed on English soil with more hatred in his heart for a race than I did for the English, and, on this platform, are present English friends who can bear witness to the fact, but the more I lived among them, saw how the machine is working, the English national life, mixed with them, found where the heart-beat of the nation was, the more I loved them. There is none among you here present, my brothers, who loves the English people more than I do. You have to see what is going on there, and you have to mix with them. As the philosophy, our national philosophy of the Vedanta, has summarised all misfortune, all misery from that one cause, ignorance, herein also we must understand that the difficulties that arise between us and the English people are mostly due to that ignorance; we do not know them, they do not know us.”

Swami Vivekananda

Source: Spoken on his return to India from England, as recorded in From Colombo to Almora (1904), p. 221

Understanding , Love , Life , People