Swami Vivekananda Quotes

The presence of any humility in my life is purely and completely an evidence of God's grace. From my perspective, I am not a humble man. I am a proud man pursuing humility by the grace of God.

Such excessive preoccupation with his faults is not a truly spiritual activity but, on the contrary, a highly egoistic one.The recognition of his own faults should make a man humbler, when it is beneficial, not prouder, which the thought that he ought to have been above these faults makes him.

The ego tells you to fill space. Your spirit tells you to let space fill you.

Every day I'm trying to be more humble and how do you do that? I guess, every day, we have mass. Every day, I pray the rosary. That's what I do.

I believe firmly that it was the Almighty's goodness, to check my consummate vanity.

An humble knowledge of thyself is a surer way to God than a deep search after learning.

Our holiness is an effect, not a cause; so long as our eyes are on our own personal whiteness as an end in itself, the thing breaks down.

As six-time world karate champion and then a movie star, I put too much trust in who I was, what I could do, and what I acquired. I forgot how much I needed others and especially God.

Obviously, with my faith, too, I don't want to seem like it's all about me, me, me. It takes away from what I do for Him, for the Lord.

The No. 1 thing you should know about me: I've always tried to put God first in my life, and I'm the first to admit I often have failed because I'm too proud and too stubborn.

I used to be real cocky about what I do but then I realized it's not me, all of this is really God's gift and whenever He want to, He can take it away.

...The God I know is one that promotes peace and freedom. But I get great sustenance from my personal relationship. That doesn't make me think I'm a better person than you are, by the way. Because one of the great admonitions in the Good Book is, don't try to take a speck out of your eye if I've got a log in my own.

Righteousness cannot be born until self-righteousness is dead.

Humility is honestly assessing ourselves in light of God’s holiness and our sinfulness.

This Catholic thing, I think what it does is it makes a place for mystery in a person. And even when the faith goes away, there's that space where you crave something bigger than yourself. For me, that's kind of where art came in, after that.

Every Christian man has a choice between being humble and being humbled.

God does everything through people who understand they're nothing. And God does nothing through those who think they're everything.

You need your ego to survive in the three-dimensional world, but you need only that part of the ego which processes information. The rest - pride, arrogance, defensiveness, fear - is worse than useless. The rest of the ego separates you from wisdom, joy, and God.

In order to see Jesus, we first need to let him look at us!

They that know God will be humble. They that know themselves cannot be proud.

The ego isn't wrong; it's just unconscious. When you observe the ego in yourself, you are beginning to go beyond it. Don't take the ego too seriously. When you detect egoic behavior in yourself, smile. At times you may even laugh. How could humanity have been taken in by this for so long? Above all, know that the ego isn't personal. It isn't who you are. If you consider the ego to be your personal problem, that's just more ego.

Let's not get too full of ourselves. Let's leave space for God to come into the room.

O that men would know themselves to be men; and that he that glorieth would glory in the Lord.

God cannot be realizxd if there is the slightest trace of pride.

In terms of the ego, most religions teach in some way that all of us must die before we die, and then we will not be afraid of dying. Suffering of some sort seems to be the only thing strong enough to destabilize our arrogance and our ignorance. I would define suffering very simply as whenever you are not in control.