Swami Vivekananda's Quotes On Character

This article is on Swami Vivekananda's quotes and comments on character.

Swami Vivekananda's quotes on character

According to Swami Vivekananda—

• Build up your character, and manifest your real nature, the Effulgent, the Resplendent, the Ever-Pure, and call It up in everyone that you see.^[Source]
• Character has to be established through a thousand stumbles.^[Source]
• Character is repeated habits, and repeated habits alone can reform character.^[Source]
• Continue to exercise your will and it will take you higher still. The will is almighty. If it is almighty, you may say, why cannot I do everything? But you are thinking only of your little self. Look back on yourselves from the state of the amoeba to the human being; who made all that? Your own will. Can you deny then that it is almighty? That which has made you come up so high can make you go higher still. What you want is character, strengthening of the will.^[Source]

• 

  Character is repeated habits,
  and repeated habits alone can reform character.
  

  —Swami Vivekananda

   Image source: Wikimedia Commons

  Each man's character is determined by the sum total of these impressions. If good impressions prevail, the character becomes good; if bad, it becomes bad. If a man continuously hears bad words, thinks bad thoughts, does bad actions, his mind will be full of bad impressions; and they will influence his thought and work without his being conscious of the fact. In fact, these bad impressions are always working, and their resultant must be evil, and that man will be a bad man; he cannot help it. The sum total of these impressions in him will create the strong motive power for doing bad actions. He will be like a machine in the hands of his impressions, and they will force him to do evil. Similarly, if a man thinks good thoughts and does good works, the sum total of these impressions will be good; and they, in a similar manner, will force him to do good even in spite of himself. When a man has done so much good work and thought so many good thoughts that there is an irresistible tendency in him to do good in spite of himself and even if he wishes to do evil, his mind, as the sum total of his tendencies, will not allow him to do so; the tendencies will turn him back; he is completely under the influence of the good tendencies. When such is the case, a man's good character is said to be established.^[Source]
• Every fool may become a hero at one time or another. Watch a man do his most common actions; those are indeed the things which will tell you the real character of a great man. Great occasions rouse even the lowest of human beings to some kind of greatness, but he alone is the really great man whose character is great always, the same wherever he be.^[Source]
• First form character, first earn spirituality and results will come of themselves.^[Source]
• First make character — that is the highest duty you can perform.^[Source]
• If you take the character of any man, it really is but the aggregate of tendencies, the sum total of the bent of his mind; you will find that misery and happiness are equal factors in the formation of that character. Good and evil have an equal share in moulding character, and in some instances misery is a greater teacher than happiness. In studying the great characters the world has produced, I dare say, in the vast majority of cases, it would be found that it was misery that taught more than happiness, it was poverty that taught more than wealth, it was blows that brought out their inner fire more than praise.^[Source]
• It is character that pays everywhere.^[Source]
• Money does not pay, nor name; fame does not pay, nor learning. It is love that pays; it is character that cleaves its way through adamantine walls of difficulties.^[Source]
• Neither money pays, nor name, nor fame, nor learning; it is character that can cleave through adamantine walls of difficulties. Bear this in mind.^[Source]
• Perfect love, the heart never reacting, this is what builds character.^[Source]
• Samskaras are left by these vibrations passing out of our mind, each one of them leaving its result. Our character is the sum-total of these marks, and according as some particular wave prevails one takes that tone. If good prevails, one becomes good; if wickedness, one becomes wicked; if joyfulness, one becomes happy.^[Source]
• Talking about faith and belief and doctrine is easy, but it is so difficult to build character and to stem the tide of the senses. We succumb. We become hypocrites.^[Source]
• There is no allegiance possible where there is no character in the leader, and perfect purity ensures the most lasting allegiance and confidence.^[Source]
• Upon ages of struggle a character is built.^[Source]
• We want that education by which character is formed, strength of mind is increased, the intellect is expanded, and by which one can stand on one's own feet.^[Source]
• What we want is character, that steadiness and character that make a man cling on to a thing like grim death.^[Source]

See also

• How to change our character?

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This page was last updated on: 8 December 2014, 6:24 pm IST (UTC+5:30 hours)
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