God is ever active. All power is his and within his command. Through his command the winds blow, the sun shines, the earth lives, and death stalks upon the earth (Katha Upanishad, 2.3.3). God is the all in all. God is all and in all. We can only worship God.
Class on Karma Yoga. New York, January 10, 1896. Complete Works, 1.107.
The teachings of Krishna as taught by the Gita are the grandest the world has ever known. He who wrote that wonderful poem was one of those rare souls whose lives sent a wave of regeneration through the world. The human race will never again see such brain as his who wrote the Gita.
Retreat given at the Thousand Island Park, USA. June 30, 1895. Complete Works, 7.22.
The music of the Westerners is much advanced. They have the sentiment of pathos as well as of heroism in their music, which is as it should be.
Conversation: July 1898, at Nilambar Mukherjee's garden house in Belur. Complete Works, 5.363.
Ordinarily speaking, spiritual aspiration ought to be balanced through the intellect, otherwise it may degenerate into mere sentimentality.
Retreat given at the Thousand Island Park, USA. June 30, 1895. Complete Works, 7.22.
Shivananda: What is Western music like?
Vivekananda: Oh, it is very good. There is in it a perfection of harmony, which we have not attained. Only, to our untrained ears, it does not sound well, hence we do not like it, and think that the singers howl like jackals. I also had the same sort of impression, but when I began to listen to the music with attention and study it minutely, I came more and more to understand it, and I was lost in admiration. Such is the case with every art. In glancing at a highly finished painting we cannot understand where its beauty lies. Moreover, unless the eye is, to a certain extent, trained, one cannot appreciate the subtle touches and blendings, the inner genius of a work of art.
Conversation: July 1898, at Nilambar Mukherjee's garden house in Belur. Complete Works, 5.361-62.
If I am God, then my soul is a temple of the Highest, and my every work should be a worship--love for love's sake, duty for duty's sake, without hope of reward or fear of punishment. Thus my religion means expansion, and expansion means realization and perception in the highest sense--no mumbling words or genuflections. We have to become divine, realizing the divine more and more from day to day in an endless progress.
From a summary of a lecture given before the Brooklyn Ethical Society at the Pouch Mansion, Brooklyn, on December 30, 1894. Reproduced from the Brooklyn Standard Union. Complete Works, 1.332.
Great saints are the object-lessons of the Principle. But the disciples make the saint the Principle, and then they forget the Principle in the person.
Retreat given at the Thousand Island Park, USA. June 30, 1895. Complete Works, 7.21.
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