Swami Vivekananda Quotes

Ignorance is the curse of God; knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.

Faith is not a means to something further. It is not something we do in order to get to heaven. Faith is its own end. To have faith is already to have come alive.

The Baseball Hall of Fame is something every player dreams about, but being a member of God's Hall of Fame is the greatest achievement of all. God offers each of us the gift of eternal life through Jesus Christ. When we accept God's gift of salvation, our name is written in the Book of Life, guaranteeing us a place in heaven forever. I made that decision during spring training in 1973, asking Jesus to come into my heart as Lord and Savior.

[To have Faith in Christ] means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you.

Forgetfulness of your real nature is true death; remembrance of it is rebirth.

If they don't know the Lord, I encourage them to search for and open their hearts and their eyes. If something happens to me tomorrow, I'm going to go to heaven and that's for sure because God's promised to us in the Bible. I want to make sure that those people out there feel the same. At the end of the day as long as I glorify him and those 45,000 people know who I represent out there every time I step out on the field, that's what it's about. It's about representing God.

Right now if this preacher died he would go to heaven. Not because I spent years in the jungles and the Andes Mountains of Peru. Not because of piety, devotion or bible study. Not because of denominational affiliation, baptism, or participation in the Lord’s supper. If I died right now, I would go to heaven because two thousand years ago the Son of God shed His blood for this wretched man. And that is my hope.

Salvation is not a religion. It's not rules or regulations or rituals. Salvation is a relationship. That relationship doesn't begin when you get to Heaven; it begins here on Earth.

This precept descended from Heaven: know thyself.

The world is by no means averse to religion. In fact, it is devoted to it with a passion. It will buy any recipe for salvation as long as that formula leaves the responsibility for cooking up salvation firmly in human hands. The world is drowning in religion. But it is scared out of its wits by any mention of the grace that takes the world home gratis.

Heaven is real and hell is real, and eternity is but a breath away.

Now there cannot be first principles for men, unless the Divinity has revealed them; all the rest--beginning, middle, and end--isnothing but dreams and smoke.

A man may go to heaven without health, without riches, without honors, without learning, without friends; but he can never go there without Christ.

There isn't anyone anywhere who isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. Don't you know that? Don't you know that goddam secret yet? And don't you know — listen to me, now — don't you know who that Fat Lady really is? . . . Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It's Christ Himself. Christ Himself, buddy.

I think one of the things the church service means is hope.

Between here and heaven, every minute that the Christian lives will be a minute of grace.

Pray all the time, read all the scriptures in the world, and worship all the gods there are ...but unless you realize the Truth, there is no freedom.

Weak faith will as surely land the Christian in heaven as strong faith, for it is impossible the least dram of true grace should perish

For me to be a saint means to be myself. Therefore the problem of sanctity and salvation is in fact the problem of finding out who I am and of discovering my true self.

The one help we all need is given to us freely though the Atonement of Jesus Christ. Having faith in Jesus Christ and In His Atonement means relying completely on Him-trusting in His infinite power, intelligence, and love.

And this reality extends beyond this life. Heaven is full of forgiven people. Hell is full of forgiven people. Heaven is full of people God loves, whom Jesus died for. Hell is full of forgiven people God loves, whom Jesus died for. The difference is how we choose to live, which story we choose to live in, which version of reality we trust.

No one ever reached heaven without repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ.

This life soon be over, I say. Heaven last all ways.

Your happy destiny is unavoidable. You cannot be "saved." There is no hell except not knowing this.

Do something, by God’s help, to make heaven more full and hell more empty.