Great Throughts Treasury

"Learn everything that is good from others, but bring it in, and in your own way absorb it; do not become others."

"Knowledge can only be got in one way, the way of experience; there is no other way to know."

"Learn to feel yourself in other bodies, to know that we are all one. Throw all other nonsense to the winds. Spit out your actions, good or bad, and never think of them again. What is done is done. Throw off superstition. Have no weakness even in the face of death. Do not repent, do not brood over past deeds. Be free."

"Let each one of us pray day and night for the downtrodden millions who are held fast by poverty, priestcraft, and tyranny. Pray day and night for them. I care more to preach religion to them than to the high and the rich."

"Learning and wisdom are superfluities, the surface glitter merely, but it is the heart that is the seat of all power."

"Let new India arise out of peasants cottage, grasping the plough, out of huts, cobbler and sweeper."

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

"Let us calmly and in a manly fashion go to work, instead of dissipating our energy in unnecessary frettings and fumings. I, for one, thoroughly believe that no power in the universe can withhold from anyone anything he really deserves."

"Let us make our hearts as big as an ocean, to go beyond all the trifles of the world and see it only as a picture. We can then enjoy the world without being in any way affected by it."

"Let the mind be cheerful but calm. Never let it run into excesses, because every excess will be followed by a reaction."

"Let us worship the spirit in spirit, standing on spirit. Let the foundation be spirit, the middle spirit, the culmination spirit."

"Let us not depend upon the world for pleasure."

"Life is a pilgrimage. The wise man does not rest by the roadside inns. He marches direct to the illimitable domain of eternal bliss, his ultimate destination."

"Life has meaning only in the struggle. Triumph or defeat is in the hands of the Gods. So let us celebrate the struggle!"

"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."

"Life is short. Time is fleeting. Realize the Self. Purity of the heart is the gateway to God. Aspire. Renounce. Meditate. Be good; do good. Be kind; be compassionate. Inquire, know Thyself."

"Live for an ideal, and that one ideal alone. Let it be so great, so strong, that there may be nothing else left in the mind; no place for anything else, no time for anything else."

"Love is always mutual and reflective. You may hate me, and if I want to love you, you repulse me. But if I persist, in a month or a year you are bound to love me. It is a well-known psychological phenomenon."

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

"Look upon every man, woman, and everyone as God. You cannot help anyone, you can only serve: serve the children of the Lord, serve the Lord Himself, if you have the privilege."

"May I be born again and again, and suffer thousands of miseries so that I may worship the only God that exists, the only God I believe in, the sum total of all souls--and, above all, my God the wicked, my God the miserable, my God the poor of all races, of all species, is the special object of my worship."

"Man is to become divine by realizing the divine. Idols or temples, or churches or books, are only the supports, the help of his spiritual childhood."

"Many of us get many messages in our lives, or think we get them. As long as the message is regarding our own selves, go on doing what you please. But when it is in regard to our contact with and behavior to others, think a hundred times before you act upon it-and then you will be safe."

"Many times I have been in the jaws of death, starving, footsore, and weary; for days and days I had no food, and often could walk no further; I would sink down under a tree, and life would seem to be ebbing away."

"Meditation is painful in the beginning but it bestows immortal Bliss and supreme joy in the end."

"Meditation is the dissolution of thoughts in Eternal awareness or Pure consciousness without objectification, knowing without thinking, merging finitude in infinity."

"Moral values, and a culture and a religion, maintaining these values are far better than laws and regulations."

"Mountain-high though the difficulties appear, terrible and gloomy though all things seem, they are but Maya. Fear not, and it is banished. Crush it, and it vanishes. Stamp upon it, and it dies."

"My name should not be made prominent. It is my ideas that I want to see realized. The disciples of all the prophets have always inextricably mixed up the ideas of the Master with person, and at last killed the ideas for the person. The disciples of Sri Ramakrishna must guard against doing the same thing. Work for the idea, not the person."

"My child, what I want is muscles of iron and nerves of steel, inside which dwells a mind of the same material as that of which the thunderbolt is made."

"Nature grinds all of us. Keep count of the ounce of pleasure you get. In the long run, nature did her work through you, and when you die your body will make other plants grow. Yet we think all the time that we are getting pleasure ourselves. Thus the wheel goes round."

"Nature, body, mind go to death, not we. We neither go nor come. The man Vivekananda is in nature, is born and dies; but the Self we see as Vivekananda is never born and never dies. It is the eternal and unchangeable Reality."

"Neither seek nor avoid, take what comes."

"My countrymen should have nerves of steel, muscles of iron, and minds like thunderbolt."

"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."

"No authority can save us, no beliefs. If there is a God, all can find Him. No one needs to be told it is warm; all can discover it for themselves. So it should be with God. He should be a fact in the consciousness of every person."

"No one should be judged by their defects. The great virtues a person has are his or her especially. But their errors are the common weakness of humanity and should never be counted in estimating a person's character."

"Our first duty is not to hate ourselves, because to advance we must have faith in ourselves first and then in God. Those who have no faith in themselves can never have faith in God."

"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."

"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?"

"Our supreme duty is to advance toward freedom-physical, mental, and spiritual-and help others to do so."

"One who leans on others cannot serve the God of Truth."

"Perfection is always infinite. We are the Infinite already.You and I, and all beings, are trying to manifest that infinity."

"Perfection does not come from belief or faith. Talk does not count for anything. Parrots can do that. Perfection comes through selfless work."

"Please everyone without becoming a hypocrite or a coward."

"Pray all the time, read all the scriptures in the world, and worship all the gods there are ...but unless you realize the Self, there is no freedom."

"Purity, patience, and perseverance are the three essentials to success and, above all, love."

"Practice meditation regularly. Meditation leads to eternal bliss. Therefore meditate, meditate."

"Put God behind everything-human beings, animals, food, and work. Make this a habit."

"Realize your true nature. That is all there is to do. Know yourself as you are-infinite spirit. That is practical religion. Everything else is impractical, for everything else will perish."