Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Vivekananda, fully Sri or Swami Vivekananda, born Narendra Nath Datta NULL

Indian Hindu Monk, Religious Leader and Philosopher credited with raising interfaith awareness

"Do not be proud; do not insist upon anything dogmatic; do not go against anything---ours is to put the chemicals together, the Lord knows how and when the crystal will form."

"Do any deserve liberty who are not ready to give it to others? Let us calmly go to work, instead of dissipating our energy in unnecessary fretting and fuming."

"Do not look back upon what has been done. Go ahead!"

"Do not stand on a high pedestal and take 5 cents in your hand and say, here, my poor man, but be grateful that the poor man is there, so by making a gift to him you are able to help yourself. It is not the reciever that is blessed, but it is the giver. Be thankful that you are allowed to exercise your power of benevolence and mercy in the world, and thus become pure and perfect."

"Do one thing at a Time, and while doing it put your whole Soul into it to the exclusion of all else."

"Do not try to lead your brethren, but serve them. The brutal mania for leading has sunk many a great ship in the waters of life."

"Do not hate anybody, because that hatred which comes out from you must, in the long run, come back to you. If you love, that love will come back to you, completing the circle."

"Do not recognize wickedness in others. Wickedness is ignorance, weakness. What is the good of telling people they are weak? Criticism and destruction are of no avail. We must give them a little higher; tell them of their own glorious nature, their birthright."

"Do not go for glass beads leaving the mine of diamonds. This life is a great chance. What, seekest thou the pleasures of the world? He is the fountain of all bliss. See for the highest, aim at that highest, and you shall reach the highest."

"Do you believe in that Infinite, good Providence working in and through you? If you believe that this Omnipresent One is present in every atom, is through and through, Ota-Prota, as the Sanskrit word goes, penetrating your body, mind and soul, how can you lose heart?"

"Do you know how much energy, how many powers, how many forces, are still lurking behind that frame of yours? What scientist has known all that is in man? Millions of years have passed since man came here, and yet but one infinitesimal part of his powers has been manifested."

"Do you love your fellow men? Where should you go to seek for God-- are not all the poor, the miserable, the weak, gods? Why not worship them first? Why go to dig a well on the shores of the Ganga?"

"Do you think these sannyasi children of Sri Ramakrishna are born to simply to sit under trees lighting dhuni-fires? Whenever any of them will take up some work, people will be astonished to see their energy. Learn from them how to work."

"Do you not know from the history of the world where the power of prophets lay? Where was it? In the intellect? Did any of them write a fine book on philosophy, on the most intricate ratiocinations of logic? Not one of them. They only spoke a few words. Feel like Christ and you will be a Christ; feel like Buddha and you will be a Buddha. It is feeling that is life, the strength, the vitality, without which no amount of intellectual activity can reach God."

"Doing good is not religion, but work done rightly leads to Freedom... Thank God for giving you this world as a moral gymnasium to help your development.."

"Doing work is not religion, but work done rightly leads to Freedom. In reality all pity is darkness, because whom to pity? Can you pity God? And is there anything else? Thank God for giving you this world as a moral gymnasium to help your development, but never imagine you can help the world."

"Doing good to others out of compassion is good, but the Seva (service) of all beings in the spirit of the Lord is better."

"Doing good to others is virtue (Dharma); injuring others is sin. Strength and manliness are virtue; weakness and cowardice are sin. Independence is virtue; dependence is sin. Loving others is virtue; hating others is sin. Faith in God and in one's own Self is virtue; doubt is sin. Knowledge of oneness is virtue; seeing diversity is sin. The different scriptures only show the means of attaining virtue."

"Don't look back—forward, infinite energy, infinite enthusiasm, infinite daring, and infinite patience—then alone can great deeds be accomplished."

"Don't go down till you are knocked down."

"Drill yourself to be thoroughly submissive. Get rid of the I. No humbuggism. Then you can get rid of the idea of duty; for all is His. Then you go on, naturally, forgiving, forgetting, etc."

"Duty is seldom sweet. It is only when love greases its wheels that it runs smoothly; it is a continuous friction otherwise. How else could parents do their duties to their children, husbands to their wives and vice versa? Do we not meet with cases of friction every day in our lives? Duty is sweet only through love."

"Drinking the cup of desire, the world becomes mad. Day and night never come together, so desire and the Lord never come together."

"Each is responsible for the evil anywhere in this world....All that unites with the universal is virtue. All that separates is sin. You are a part of the Infinite. This is your nature. Hence you are your brother's keeper....Not one can attain liberty until every being (ant or dog) has liberty. Not one can be happy until all are happy. When you hurt anyone you hurt yourself, for you and your brother are one."

"Each man is the Infinite already, only these bars and bolts and different circumstances shut him in, but as soon as they are removed, he rushes out and expresses himself."

"Each one of the steps to attain Samadhi has been reasoned out, properly adjusted, scientifically organized, and when faithfully practised, will surely lead us to the desired end. Then will all sorrows cease, all miseries vanish; the seeds for actions will be burnt, and the soul will be free for ever."

"Each soul is potentially divine. The goal is to manifest this Divinity within, by controlling nature, external and internal. Do this either by work, or worship, or psychic control, or philosophy — by one or more or all of these — and be free. This is the whole of religion. Doctrines, or dogmas, or rituals, or books, or temples, or forms, are but secondary details."

"Each one of our Yogas is fitted to make man perfect even without the help of the others, because they have all the same goal in view. The Yogas of work, wisdom, and of devotion are all capable of serving as direct and independent means for the attainment of Moksha."

"Education is not an accumulation of words... Education is not the collecting of facts."

"Each work has to pass through these stages—ridicule, opposition, and then acceptance. Those who think ahead of their time are sure to be misunderstood."

"Each one of us has come out of one protoplasmic cell, and all the powers we possess were coiled up there....The energy was there, potentially no doubt, but still there. So is infinite power in the soul of man, whether he knows it or not. Its manifestation is only a question of being conscious of it."

"Education is not the amount of information that is put into your brain and runs riot there, undigested all your life."

"Education is not filling the mind with a lot of facts. Perfecting the instrument and getting complete mastery of my own mind [is the ideal of education]. If I want to concentrate my mind upon a point, it goes there, and the moment I call, it is free [again]."

"Education may be described as a development of faculty, not an accumulation of words, or, as a training of individuals to will rightly and efficiently."

"Education is the manifestation of perfection present already in man. Divinity is the manifestation of the religion already in man"

"Ethics always says, Not I, but thou. Its motto is, Not self, but non-self. The vain ideas of individualism to which man clings when he is trying to find that Infinite Power, or that Infinite Pleasure through the senses, have to be given up, say the laws of ethics. You have to put yourself last, and others before you. The senses say, Myself first. Ethics says, I must hold myself last. Thus, all codes of ethics are based upon this renunciation; destruction, not construction, of the individual on the material plane. That Infinite will never find expression upon the material plane, nor is it possible or thinkable."

"Even the greatest fool can accomplish a task if it be after his heart. But the intelligent man is he who can convert every work into one that suits his taste. No work is petty. Everything in this world is like a banyan-seed, which though appearing tiny as a mustard-seed, has yet the gigantic banyan tree latent within it. He indeed is intelligent who notices this and succeeds in making all work truly great."

"Even the least work done for others awakens the power within; even thinking the least good of others gradually instills into the heart the strength of a lion. I love you all ever so much, but I wish you all to die working for others — I should rather be glad to see you do that! … Get up, and put your shoulders to the wheel — how long is this life for? As you have come into the world, leave some mark behind. Otherwise, where is the difference between you and the trees and stones?"

"Every action that helps us manifest our divine nature more and more is good; every action that retards it is evil."

"Every duty is holy, and devotion to duty is the highest form of the worship of God."

"Even the least work done for others awakens the power within; even thinking the least good of others gradually instills into the heart the strength of a lion."

"Every human personality may be compared to a glass globe. There is the same pure white light--an emission of the divine Being--in the centre of each, but the glass being of different colors and thickness, the rays assume diverse aspects in the transmission."

"Every good thought that we send to the world without thinking of any return, will be stored up there and break one link in the chain, and make us purer and purer, until we become the purest of mortals."

"Every individual existence is brought into rhythm by a pendulum to which the heart gives type and name. There is a time for expanding and a time for contraction; one provokes the other and the other calls for the return of the first... Never are we nearer the Light than when the darkness is deepest."

"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."

"Every man should take up his own ideal and endeavour to accomplish it; that is a surer way of progress than taking up other men's ideals, which he can never hope to accomplish."

"Every man is a slave except the Yogi. He is a slave to food, to air, to his wife, to his children, to a dollar, slave to a nation, slave to name and fame, and to a thousand things in the world. The man who is not controlled by any one of these bondages is alone a real man, a real Yogi."

"Everyone must work in the universe. Only those who are perfectly satisfied with the Self, whose desires do not go beyond the Self, whose mind never strays out of the Self, to whom the Self is all in all, only those do not work. The rest must work."

"Every successful man must have behind him somewhere tremendous integrity, tremendous sincerity, and that is the cause of his signal success in life. He may not have been perfectly unselfish; yet he was tending towards it. If he had been perfectly unselfish, his would have been a great success as that of the Buddha or of the Christ. The degree of unselfishness marks the degree of success everywhere."

"Every step I take in light is mine forever."