"Hold your money merely as custodian for what is God's. Have no attachment for it. Let name and fame and money go; they are a terrible bondage. Feel the wonderful atmosphere of freedom. You are free, free, tree! Oh blessed am I! Freedom am I! I am the Infinite! In my soul I can find no beginning and no end. All is my Self. Say this unceasingly."

Once when a student asked him why there is
so much evil in the world, the Swami replied,
" Tulsidas says, ' to the good the world is full
of good, but to the bad the world is full of evil.'
The world is neither good nor bad. What I call
good, you perhaps call bad, and the reverse.
Where is the standard ? The standard is in our
own attitude towards life. Each one has his
own standard. And with increased experience
and insight, the standard changes

|Turiyananda of the Puri Order

It's easy to live forever.
All you have to do is
hunt down a wild elephant
that's lived its whole life
in your heart,
and teach it to go down on one knee
and fan you

One's destiny is in one's own hands — the Guru
only makes this much understood

Vivekanada



Through the power of the seed itself the tree grows,
the air and water are only aids.




Only get your mind to cling to Him as far as you can. For then
only the great magic of this world will break of itself. But then, you must persevere. You
must take off your mind from lust and lucre, must discriminate always between the real
and the unreal — must settle down into the mood of bodilessness with the brooding
thought that you are not this body, and must always have the realisation that you are the
all-pervading Atman. This persevering practice is called Purushakâra (self-exertion — as
distinguished from grace). By such self-exertion will come true reliance on Him, and that
is the goal of human achievement.


Whoever cannot cook well cannot
become a good Sâdhu; unless the mind is pure, good tasteful cooking is not possible

 "The outside world is the projection of your own mind. As you give out to the world, so you receive back from it. It is just like looking into the mirror. The reflection in the mirror exactly shows what faces you make at it."

| Durga_Charan_Nag

“Incarnations arrive to give grihasthas [householders] self-confidence, prestige,
and strength,” the swami says. “Even the incarnations are born in grihastha
families. The entire world, the entire society, depends upon the grihastha.”2
Quoting from the Manu Smriti, he adds, “The grihastha ashrama is the greatest
among the ashramas, because it is only the grihastha who provides food and
education to the people of the other three ashramas.”

| Swami Ranganathananda  of the Puri Order

Swami Akhilananda specialized in the study of psychology. My feeling is
that his thinking may have gone like this: “Most people are not suited for
monastic life. Even in India, out of our huge population only a small percentage
even want to become monks, despite coming from a deeply religious culture that
extols monastic life and glorifies its heroes. Of those who do become monks,
many fail and many more become charlatans.
“The situation of the Americans is infinitely worse. Their secular culture not
only discourages monasticism; it is saturated with materialism and sensuality.
From the time they are born, Americans are bombarded with materialistic and
sensory stimuli that render them completely unfit for monastic life. There may
be a few rare Americans who might make good monks, but it is unlikely that I
shall meet them in this lifetime. If I were to encourage Americans to become
monks, and if they were later to break their monastic vows, they would be guilty
of a great sin. And it would be my fault for having encouraged them.”

“Who taught you all this, Doctor?”
The reply came promptly:
“Suffering.”
—Albert Camus

If people consider every human being to be God, how can they
consider themselves to be superior to others and harbor anger, hatred
and arrogance—or even compassion—toward them? Their minds will
become pure as they serve all beings as God, and soon they will
experience themselves as parts of the blissful God—by nature pure,
illumined and free

| Vivekananda

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach.

| Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Although a man has not studied a single system of philosophy,
although he does not believe in any God, and never has believed,
although he has not prayed even once in his whole life, if the simple
power of good actions has brought him to that state where he is ready
to give up his life and all else for others, he has arrived at the same
point to which the religious man will come through his prayers and
the philosopher through his knowledge; and so you may find that the
philosopher, the worker, and the devotee, all meet at one point, that
one point being self-abnegation. However much their systems of
philosophy and religion may differ, all mankind stand in reverence
and awe before the man who is ready to sacrifice himself for others.
Here, it is not at all any question of creed, or doctrine—even men who
are very much opposed to all religious ideas, when they see one of
these acts of complete self-sacrifice, feel that they must revere it.
—Swami Vivekananda (Complete Works I: 86)