Swami Vivekananda

The happiest moments we ever know are when we entirely forget ourselves.

Soft-brained people, weak-minded, chicken-hearted , cannot find the truth. One has to be free, and as broad as the sky.

Look here — we shall all die! Bear this in mind always, and then the spirit within will wake up. Then only, meanness will vanish from you, practicality in work will come, you will get new vigour in mind and body, and those who come in contact with you will also feel that they have really got something uplifting from you.

Let positive, strong, helpful thoughts enter into your brains from very childhood. Lay yourselves open to these thoughts, and not to weakening and paralysing ones.

Only those who want nothing are masters of Nature.

Oh, to live even for a day in the full light of freedom, to breathe the free air of simplicity! Isn't that the highest purity?

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.

I am a Hindu, I am proud to belong to a religion which has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance. We believe not only in universal toleration, but we accept all religions as true.

The help which tends to make us spiritually strong is the highest help, next to it comes intellectual help and after that comes physical help.

If superstition enters, the brain is gone.

This is the great lesson that we are here to learn through myriads of births and heavens and hells - that there is nothing to be asked for, desired for, beyond one's spiritual Self (atman).

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

The atom cannot disobey the law. Whether it is the mental or the physical atom, it must obey the law. "What is the use of [external restraint]?"

Every little bit, every atom inside the universe, is in a constant state of change and motion, but the universe as a whole is unchangeable, because motion or change is a relative thing; we can only think of something in motion in comparison with something which is not moving.

The difference between architecture and building is that the former expresses an idea, while the latter is merely a structure built on economical principles. The value of matter depends solely on its capacities of expressing ideas.

Every atom is trying to go and join itself to the next atom. Atoms after atoms combine, making huge balls, the earths, the suns, the moons, the stars, the planets. They in their turn, are trying to rush towards each other, and at last, we know that the whole universe, mental and material, will be fused into one.

Art must be in touch with nature - and wherever that touch is gone, Art degenerates - yet it must be above nature.

Everything progresses in waves. The march of civilization, the progression of worlds, is in waves. All human activities likewise progress in waves - art, literature, science, religion.

Each soul is a star and all stars are set in the infinite azure, the eternal sky-the Lord.

To be good and to do good-that is the whole of religion.

It is only by doing good to others that one attains to one's own good