Swami Vivekananda Quotes

Cut out the love of self, like an autumn lotus with thy hand!

The highest fulfillment of religion requires a giving up of all possessions.

In order to possess what you do not possess, you must go by the way of dispossession.

The longer I live, the more I feel that true repose consists in 'renouncing' one's own self, by which I mean making up one's mind to admit that there is no importance whatever in being 'happy' or 'unhappy' in the usual meaning of the words.

In all our Yogas this renunciation is necessary. This is the stepping-stone and the real centre and the real heart of all spiritual culture - renunciation. This is religion - renunciation.

To give up the world is to forget the ego, to know it not at all - living in the body, but not of it.

He who gives up action falls. He who gives up the reward rises. But renunciation of fruit in no way means indifference to the result.

Renunciation means absence of hankering after fruit.

Renunciation is the central sun, round which devotion, knowledge and the rest revolve like planets.

A religious person is a desireless person.

The only power a god can teach is the power of doing without happiness.

All desires and egoism will have to be banished from the being.

The sacrifice which causes sorrow to the doer of the sacrifice is no sacrifice. Real sacrifice lightens the mind of the doer and gives him a sense of peace and joy. The Buddha gave up the pleasures of life because they had become painful to him.

Renounce and give up. What did Christ say? "He that loseth his life for my sake shall find it." Again and again did he preach renunciation as the only way to perfection. There comes a time when the mind awakes from this long and dreary dream-the child gives up its play and wants to go back to its mother. Renunciation is not asceticism. Are all beggars Christ? Poverty is not a synonym for holiness; often the reverse.

Resignation is a quality of the saintly souls.

To attain Buddhahood ... we must scatter this life's aims and objects to the wind.

Let there be as little materialism as possible, with the maximum of spirituality.

In the East, all the religions preach egolessness. So in the East, everybody is against the ego from the very beginning.

No one can be a yogi, maintaining a state of mental equilibrium, free from inner involvement in planned desireful activities, unless he has renounced identification with his ego and its unsatisfiable lust for the fruits of actions.

Renunciation - that is the great fact we all, individuals and classes, have to learn. In trying to avoid it we bring misery to ourselves and others.

If a hermit lives in a state of ecstasy, his lack of comfort becomes the height of comfort. He must relinquish it.

Homelessness is the fundamental idea of salvation in Jainism. It means the breaking off of all earthly relations, and therefore, above all, indifference to general impressions and avoidance of all worldly motives, the ceasing to act, to hope, to desire.

Asceticism doesn't lie in mere words; He is an ascetic who treats everyone alike. Asceticism doesn't lie in visiting burial places; it lies not in wandering about nor in bathing at places of pilgrimage. Asceticism is to remain pure amidst impurities.

Tremendous purity, tremendous renunciation, is the one secret of spirituality. “Neither through wealth, nor through progeny, but through renunciation alone is immortality to be reached,” say the Vedas. “Sell all that thou hast and give to poor, and follow me,” says the Christ. So all great saints and prophets have expressed it, and have carried it out in their lives. How can great spirituality come without renunciation?

Let go of everything. That is how you get everything; you let go of everything.