Everything can be sacrificed for truth, but truth cannot be sacrificed for anything.
Swami VivekanandaRead
It is always for greater joy that you give up the lesser. This is practical religion-the attainment of freedom, renunciation. Renounce the lower so that you may get the higher. Renounce! Renounce! Sacrifice! Give up! Not for zero. Not for nothing. But to get the higher.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the importance of letting go of lesser joys to attain greater happiness and freedom.
Swami Vivekananda's quote suggests that true spiritual practice involves sacrificing lesser pleasures and desires in order to achieve higher goals and greater joy. It promotes the idea of renunciation not as a loss, but as a necessary step towards attaining a more fulfilling and liberated life. The repetition of the words 'renounce' and 'sacrifice' underscores the urgency and importance of this practice in the journey towards enlightenment and true happiness.
Themes
RenunciationSacrificeFreedomJoyHigher Purpose
In practice
Example use cases
During a lecture on spirituality and personal growth, one might quote Swami Vivekananda to emphasize the importance of making sacrifices for greater goals.
More from Swami Vivekananda
All quotes βRama, the ancient idol of the heroic ages, the embodiment of truth, of morality, the ideal son, the ideal husband, and above all, the ideal king, this Rama has been presented before us by the great sage Valmiki. No language can be purer, none chaster, none more beautiful, and at the same time simpler, than the language in which the great poet has depicted the life of Rama.
Swami VivekanandaRead
Hinduism threw away Buddhism after taking its sap. The attempt of all the Southern Acharyas was to effect a reconciliation between the two. Shankaracharya's teaching shows the influence of Buddhism. His disciples perverted his teaching and carried it to such an extreme point that some of the later reformers were right in calling the Acharya's followers "crypto-buddhists".
Swami VivekanandaRead
According to the law of nature, wherever there is an awakening of a new and stronger life, there it tries to conquer and take the place of the old and the decaying. Nature favours the dying out of the unfit and the survival of the fittest. The final result of such conflict between the priestly and the other classes has been mentioned already.
Swami VivekanandaRead
I have come to deal with principles. I have only to preach that God comes again and again, and that He came in India as Krishna, Rama, and Buddha, and that He will come again. It can almost be demonstrated that after each 500 years the world sinks, and a tremendous spiritual wave comes, and on the top of the wave is a Christ.
Swami VivekanandaRead
Salvation means knowing the truth. We do not become anything; we are what we are. Salvation [comes] by faith and not by work. It is a question of knowledge! You must know what you are, and it is done. The dream vanishes. This you [and others] are dreaming here. When they die, they go to [the] heaven [of their dream]. They live in that dream, and [when it ends], they take a nice body [here], and they are good people.
Swami VivekanandaRead
Similar quotes
It is only imperfection that complains of what is imperfect. The more perfect we are the more gentle and quiet we become towards the defects of others.
Joseph AddisonRead
Successful givers secure their oxygen masks before coming to the assistance of others. Although their motives may be less purely altruistic, their actions prove more altruistic, because they give more.
Adam GrantRead
Never did he once consider directing his hatred toward the hunters. Such an emotion would have destroyed him ... His subconscious knew what his min did not guess-that hating them would have consumed him, burned him up like a piece of soft coal, leaving only flakes of ash and a question mark of smoke.
Toni MorrisonRead
Your head is a living forest full of songbirds.
E. E. CummingsRead
I want God to play in my bloodstream the way sunlight amuses itself on the water.
Elizabeth GilbertRead
To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.
Oscar WildeRead