Quotes on Vedanta 

by Swami Vivekananda

• So long as there is desire, no real happiness can come. It is only the contemplative, witnesslike study of objects that brings us real enjoyment and happiness. The animal has its happiness in the senses, the man in his intellect, and the god in spiritual contemplation. It is only to the soul that has attained this contemplative state that the world really becomes beautiful. To him who desires nothing, and does not mix himself with them, the manifold changes of nature are one panorama of beauty and sublimity.

• Thank God for giving you this world as a moral gymnasium to help your development, but never imagine you can help the world.

• The essential thing is renunciation. Without renunciation none can pour out his whole heart in working for others. The man of renunciation sees all with an equal eye and devotes himself to the service of all.

• If you really want to judge the character of a man, look not at his great performances. Every fool may become a hero at one time or another. Watch a man do his most common actions; these are indeed the things which will tell you the real character of a great man.

• Each work has to pass through these stages: ridicule, opposition, and then acceptance. Each man who thinks ahead of his time is sure to be misunderstood. So opposition and persecution are welcome, only I have to be steady and pure and must have immense faith in God, and all these will vanish.

• We come to enjoy; we are being enjoyed. We came to rule; we are being ruled. We came to work; we are being worked. All the time, we find that. And this comes into every detail of our life. We are being worked upon by other minds, and we are always struggling to work on other minds. We want to enjoy the pleasures of life, and they eat into our vitals. We want to get everything from nature, but we find in the long run that nature takes everything from us - depletes us, and casts up aside.

• Are great things ever done smoothly? Time, patience, and indomitable will must show.

• What work do you expect from men of little hearts? Nothing in the world. You must have an iron will if you would cross the ocean. You must be strong enough to pierce mountains.

• Neither seek nor avoid; take what comes. It is liberty to be affected by nothing; do not merely endure, be unattached. Remember the story of the bull. A mosquito sat long on the horn of a certain bull. Then his conscience troubled him, and he said, "Mr. Bull, I have been sitting here a long time, perhaps I annoy you. I am sorry, I will go away." But the bull replied, "Oh no, not at all! Bring your whole family and live on my horn; what can you do to me?"

• Purity, patience, and perseverance are three essentials for success and above all, love.

• He who wants to enter the realms of light must take a bundle of all shop-keeping religion and cast it away before he can pass the gates. It is not that you do not get what you pray for; you get everything, but it is low, vulgar, a beggar's religion.

• Believe, therefore, in yourselves, and if you want material wealth, work it out; it will come to you. If you want to be intellectual, work it out on the intellectual plane, and intellectual gains you shall have. And if you want to attain to freedom, work it out on the spiritual plane, and free you shall be.

• We must not be extremely attached to anything excepting God. See everything, do everything, but be not attached. As soon as extreme attachment comes, a man loses himself, he is no more master of himself, he is a slave. If a woman is tremendously attached to a man, she becomes a slave to that man. There is no use in being a slave. There are higher things in this world than becoming a slave to a human being. In the first place, attachment degenerates us individually, and in the second place, makes us extremely selfish. Owing to this failing, we want to injure others to do good to those we love. A good many of the wicked deeds done in this world are really done through attachment to certain persons. So all attachment excepting that for good works should be avoided; but love should be given to everybody.

• Always keep your mind joyful; if melancholy thoughts come, keep them out.

• Never mind the struggle, the mistakes -- I never heard a cow tell a lie, but it is only a cow ... never a man. So never mind these failures, these little drawbacks; hold the ideal a thousand times, and if you fail a thousand times, make the attempt once more. The ideal of man is to see God in everything. But if you cannot see Him in everything, see Him in one thing, in that which you like best, and then see Him in another. So on you can go. There is infinite life before the soul. Take your time and you will achieve your end.

• Only the fools rush after sense enjoyments.

• Inspiration is much higher than reason, but it must not contradict it. Reason is the rough tool to do the hard work; inspiration is the bright light which shows us all truth. The will to do a thing is not necessarily inspiration.

• Realization is real religion, all the rest is only preparation .... hearing, lectures, reading books or reasoning is merely preparing the ground.; it is not religion. Intellectual assent and descent are not religion. The central idea of the yogis is that just as we come in direct contact with objects of the senses, so religion even can be directly perceived in a far more intense sense.

• When there is a conflict between the heart and the brain, let the heart be followed .... the intellect has only one state, i.e. reason .... it works within that and cannot go beyond. It is the heart which can take you to the highest plane. It goes beyond the limits of the intellect and attains to what is called inspiration.

• Anything that is secret and mysterious in these systems of yoga should be at once rejected. The best guide in life is strength. In religion, as in all other matters, discard everything that weakens you, have nothing to do with it.

• The great danger of psychic powers is that man stumbles, as it were, into them, and knows not how to use them rightly. He is without training and without knowledge of what has happened to him. The danger is that in using these psychic powers, the sexual feelings are abnormally roused as these powers are in fact manufactured out of the sexual center.