Swami Vivekananda on Life

"Truth does not pay homage to any society, ancient or modern. Society has to pay homage to Truth or die."

"There is only one sin. That is weakness.... The only saint is that soul that never weakens, faces everything, and determines to die game."

"This life is short, the vanities of the world are transient, but they alone live who live for others, the rest are more dead than alive."

"This life is a hard fact; work your way through it boldly, though it may be adamantine; no matter, the soul is stronger."

"Death is better than a vegetating ignorant life; it is better to die on the battle-field than to live a life of defeat."

"It is feeling that is the life, the strength, the vitality, without which no amount of intellectual activity can reach God."

"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."

"Both the forces of good and evil will keep the universe alive for us, until we awake from our dreams and give up this building of mud pies."

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

"Come out into the broad light of day, come out from the little narrow paths, for how can the infinite soul rest content to live and die in small ruts?"

"The whole secret of existence is to have no fear. Never fear what will become of you, depend on no one. Only the moment you reject all help are you free."

"The whole universe is one. There is only one Self in the universe, only One Existence."

"As soon as I think that I am a little body, I want to preserve it, to protect it, to keep it nice, at the expense of other bodies; then you and I become separate."

"What the world wants is character. The world is in need of those whose life is one burning love, selfless. That love will make every word tell like a thunderbolt."

"“Face the brutes.” That is a lesson for all life — face the terrible, face it boldly. Like the monkeys, the hardships of life fall back when we cease to flee before them."

"We came 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."

"Fear is death, fear is sin, fear is hell, fear is unrighteousness, fear is wrong life. All the negative thoughts and ideas that are in the world have proceeded from this evil spirit of fear."

"Every individual is a center for the manifestation of a certain force. This force has been stored up as the resultant of our previous works, and each one of us is born with this force at our back."

"A perfect life is a contradiction in terms."

"Strength is Life, Weakness is death."

"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."

"This I have seen in life—those who are overcautious about themselves fall into dangers at every step; those who are afraid of losing honor and respect, get only disgrace; and those who are always afraid of loss, always lose."

"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."

"A tremendous stream is flowing toward the ocean, carrying us all along with it; and though like straws and scraps of paper we may at times float aimlessly about, in the long run we are sure to join the Ocean of Life and Bliss."

"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."

"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."

"If you want to have life, you have to die every moment for it. Life and death are only different expressions of the same thing looked at from different standpoints; they are the falling and the rising of the same wave, and the two form one whole."

"Those who grumble at the little thing that has fallen to their lot to do will grumble at everything. Always grumbling, they will lead a miserable life, and everything will be a failure. But those who do their duties as they go, putting their shoulders to the wheel, will see the light, and higher duties will fall to their share."

"Never mind failures; they are quite natural, they are the beauty of life, these failures. What would life be without them? It would not be worth having if it were not for struggles. Where would be the poetry of life? Never mind the struggles, 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 backslidings; hold the ideal a thousand times, and if you fail a thousand times, make the attempt once more."

"“And may I ask you, Europeans, what country you have ever raised to better conditions? Wherever you have found weaker races, you have exterminated them by the roots, as it were. You have settled on their lands and they are gone forever. What is the history of your America, your Australia and New Zealand, your Pacific Islands and South Africa? Where are those aboriginal races there today? They are all exterminated, you have killed them outright, as if they were wild beasts. It is only where you have not the power to do so, and there only, that other nations are still alive."