• One way for attaining bhakti is by repeating the name of God a number of times. Mantras have effect - the mere repetition of words ... To obtain bhakti, seek the company of holy men who have bhakti and read books like the Gita.

• Our first duty is not to hate ourselves; because to advance we must have faith in ourselves first and then in God. He who has no faith in himself can never have faith in God.

• Every duty is holy, and devotion to duty is the highest form of worship of God.

• Education is the manifestation of the perfection already in man.

• To me the very essence of education is concentration of mind, not the collecting of facts.

• That society is the greatest, where the highest truths become practical.

• Faith, faith, faith in ourselves, faith in God - this is the secret of greatness ... Have faith in yourselves, and stand up on that faith and be strong; that is what we need.

• The Hindus were bold, to their credit be it said, bold thinkers in all their ideas, so bold that one spark of their thought frightens the so-called bold thinkers of the West.

• In my opinion, a race must first cultivate a great respect for motherhood, through the sanctification and inviolability of marriage.

• Renunciation and service are the twin ideals of India. Intensify her in these channels and the rest will take care of itself.

• ".....I do everything to be sweet, but when it comes to a horrible compromise with the truth within, then I stop. I do not believe in 'humility'. I believe on 'Samadarshitva' - same state of mind with regard to all.

• The duty of the ordinary man is to obey the commands of his 'God' - society; but the children of light never do so. This is an eternal law. One accomadates himself to surroundings and social opinion and gets all good things from society, the giver of all good to such. The other stands alone and draws society up towards him. The accommodating man finds a path of roses; the non-accommodating, one of thorns. But the worshippers of "Vox Populi" go to annihilation in a moment; the children of light 'live for ever'.

• I will compare truth to a corrosive substance of infinite power. It burns its way in wherever it falls - in soft substance at once, hard granite slowly, but it must. What is writ is writ. I am so, so sorry, that I cannot make myself 'sweet' and accomodating to every black falsehood. But I cannot. I have suffered for it all my life, but I cannot.

• At last I have given it up. The Lord is Great!....He will not allow me to become a hypocrite....Now let what is in come out. I have not found a way that will please all, and I cannot but be what I am, true to my own self......"Youth and beauty vanish, life and wealth vanish, name and fame vanish, even the mountains crumble into dust. Friendship and love vanish. TRUTH ALONE ABIDES."..........God of Truth, be Thou alone my guide! I am too old to change now into milk and honey. Allow me to remain as I am...."Without fear, without shopkeeping, caring neither for friend nor foe, do thou hold on to truth, Sannyaasin, and from this moment give up this world and the next and all that are to come - their enjoyments and their vanities....Truth, be thou alone my guide."

• I have no desire for wealth or name or fame or enjoyments, they are dust unto me....I want to help my brethren. I have not the 'tact to earn money', bless the Lord....What reason is there for me to conform to the vagaries of the world around me and not obey the voice of Truth within? The mind is still weak; it sometimes mechanically clutches at earthly help....But I am not afraid....Fear is the greatest sin, my religion teaches......"

• ".....So, we find Jesus of Nazareth, in the first place, the true son of the Orient, intensely practical. He has no faith in this evanescent world and all its belongings. No need of text-torturing, as is the fashion in the west in modern times, no need of stretching out texts until they will not stretch any more. Texts are not India-rubber, and even that has its limits.

• Now, no making of religion to pander to the sense vanity of the present day!

• Mark you, let us all be honest. If we cannot follow the ideal, let us confess our weakness, but not degrade it; let us not try to pull it down.

• One gets sick at heart at the different accounts of the life of the Christ that Western people give. I do not know what he was or what he was not! One would make him a great politician; another, perhaps, would make of him a great military general; another, a great patriotic Jew, and so on.

• Is there any warrant in the books for all such assumptions? The best commentary on the life of a great teacher is his own life. "The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head."

• That is what Christ says is the only way to salvation; he lays down no other way. Let us confess in sackcloth and ashes that we cannot do that. We still have fondness for 'me' and 'mine'. We want property, money, wealth. Woe unto us! Let us confess and not put shame to that great Teacher of Humanity!

• He had no other occupation in life; no other thought except that one, that he was a Spirit. He was a dis-embodied, unfettered, unbound Spirit. And not only so, but he, with his marvellous vision, had found every man and woman, whether Jew of Gentile, whether rich or poor, whether saint or sinner, was the embodiment of the same un-dying Spirit as himself. Therefore, the one work his whole life showed, was calling upon them to realise their own spiritual nature. Give up, he says, these superstitious dreams that you are low and that you are poor.

• Think not that you are trampled upon and tyrranized over as if you were slaves, for within you is something that can never be trampled upon, never be troubled, never be killed. You are all Sons of God, Immortal Spirit. "Know", he declared, "The Kingdom of Heaven is within you".

• "Each soul is potentially divine . The goal is to manifest this divinity within by controlling nature, external and internal. Do this either by work , or worship or psychic control or philosophy - by one or more or all of these and be free".

• "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".

• "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."

• "The world is the great gymnasium where we come to make ourself 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 things.'

• ‘YOU know, I may have to be born again, you see, I have fallen love in love with mankind.’

• ‘IT is good to love God for hope of reward, but it is better to love God for love’s sake; and the prayer goes: O Lord, I do not want wealth nor children nor learning. If it be Thy will, I shall go from birth to birth. But grant me this, that I may love thee without the hope of reward--’love’ unselfishly for love’s sake.’

• 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.

• 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 from outside: it is all inside. What we say a man knows, should, in strict psychological language, be what he discovers or unveils; what man learns is really what he discovers by taking the cover off his own soul, which is a mine of infinite knowledge.

• 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.

• All differences in this world are of degree, and not of kind, because oneness is the secret of everything.

• To devote your life to the good of all and to the happiness of all is religion. Whatever you do for your own sake is not religion.

• The greatest religion is to be true to your own nature. Have faith in yourselves!

• The spirit is the cause of all our thoughts and body-action, and everything, but it is untouched by good or evil, pleasure or pain, heat of cold, and all the dualism of nature, although it lends its light to everything.

• It is our own mental attitude which makes the world what it is for us. Our thought make things beautiful, our thoughts make things ugly. The whole world is in our own minds. Learn to see things in the proper light. First, believe in this world -- that there is meaning behind everything. Everything in the world is good, is holy and beautiful. If you see something evil, think that you are not understanding it in the right light. throw the burden on yourselves!

• In one word, this ideal is that you are divine.

• 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.

• 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.

• Where can we go to find God if we cannot see Him in our own hearts and in every living being.

• The Vedanta teaches that Nirvana can be attained here and now, that we do not have to wait for death to reach it. Nirvana is the realization of the Self; and after having once known that, if only for an instant, never again can one be deluded by the mirage of personality.

• The Vedanta recognizes no sin it only recognizes error. And the greatest error, says the Vedanta is to say that you are weak, that you are a sinner, a miserable creature, and that you have no power and you cannot do this and that.

• 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.

• Truth can be stated in a thousand different ways, yet each one can be true. ‘MY nature is love Him. And therefore I love. I do not pray for any-thing. I do not ask for anything. Let Him place me wherever He likes. I must love Him for love’s sake. I can not trade in love.’

• ‘HOW to worship Him? through love. He is to be worshipped as the one beloved dear than everything in this and the next life .’

• ‘THE Lord is great! - He will not allow me to become a hypocrite. Now let what is in come out....’

• ‘GOD of truth, be Thou alone my guide..’

• ‘GOD is the ever-active providence, by whose power systems after systems are being evolved out of chaos, made to run for a time and again destroyed.’

• ‘WHY should a man be miserable even here in the reign of a just and merciful God? '

• ‘GOD is to be worshipped as the one beloved, dearer than everything in this and next life.’

• ‘AS the different streams having their sources in different paths which men take through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee.

• ‘THROUGH prayer, the love of God grows and assumes a form which is called supreme devotion. Forms vanish, retuals fly away, books are superseded, images, temples, churches, religions and sects, countries and nationalities - all these little limitations and bondages fall off by their own nature from him who knows this love of God.’

• ‘TO worship God even for the sake of salvation or any other reward is equally degenerate. Love knows no reward. Give your love unto to God, but do not ask anything in return even from Him through pray.’

• ‘PRAYER is divine love alone. When this highest ideal of love is reached, philosophy is thrown away. Who will then care of it ? Freedom, salvation, nirvana- all are thrown away. Who cares to become free while in the enjoyment of divine love? ‘

• "WE find Jesus of Nazareth, in the first place, the true son of the Orient, intensely practical. He has no FAITH in this evanescent world and all its belongings. No need of text-torturing, as is the fashion in the west in modern times, no need of stretching out texts until they will not stretch any more.’

• ‘EACH soul is potentially Divine. The goal is to manifest this Divinity with in by controlling nature, external and internal. Do this either by work or worship or psychic control or philosophy- by one or more all of these- and be free. This is whole of RELIGION.’

• ‘WE see that the apparent contradictions and perplexities in every RELIGION mark but different stages of growth. The end of all religions is the realizing of God in the soul . That is the one universal religion.’

• ‘BY the study of different RELIGIONS we find that in essence they are one.’

• ‘A man may be the greatest philosopher in the world but a child in RELIGION. When a man has developed a high state of spirituality he can understand that the kingdom of heaven is within him.’

- Swami Vivekananda