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ON VIVEKANANDA.
He is undoubtedly the greatest figure in the Parliament of Religions. After hearing him we feel how foolish it is to send missionaries to this learned nation.
---- The New York Herald.
A striking figure, clad in yellow and orange, shining like the sun of India in the midst of the heavy atmosphere of Chicago, a lion head, piercing eyes, mobile lips, movements swift and abrupt - such was my first impression of Swami Vivekananda , as I met him in one of the rooms set apart for the use of the delegates to the Parliament of Religion.
Enraptured , the huge multitude hung upon his words; not a syllable must be lost, not a cadence missed! " That man a heathen ! " said one, as he came out of the great hall, " and we send missionaries to his people! It would be more fitting that they send missionaries to us."
--Dr. Annie Besant.
In his deep voice, he began, 'Sisters and Brothers of America ' -- and the entire audience , many hundred people, clapped and cheered wildly for two minutes....No doubt the vast majority of those present hardly knew why they had been so powerfully moved. The appearance, even the voice, of Vivekananda cannot fully explain it. A large gathering has its own strange kind of subconscious telepathy, and this one must have been somehow aware that it was in the presence of that most unusual of beings, a man whose words express exactly what he is. When Vivekananda said, 'Sisters and Brothers ' he actually meant that he regarded the American women and men before him as sisters and brothers ; the well-known orational phrase became simple truth.
----Christopher Isherwood
"To ask you, Swami, for your credentials is like asking the sun about its right to shine."
----Professor John Henry Wright of Harvard University
Vivekananda's address before the Parliament was broad as the heaven above us, embracing the best in all religions, as the ultimate universal religion-- charity to all mankind and good works for the love of God, not for fear of punishment or hope of reward. He is a great favourite of the Parliament....If he merely crosses the platform he is applauded........ At the Parliament of Religions they used to keep Vivekananda until the end of the programme to make people stay till the end of the session......The four thousand fanning people in the Hall of Columbus would sit smiling and expectant waiting for an hour or two to listen to Vivekananda for fifteen minutes.The Chairman knew the old rule of keeping the best until the last.
---Boston Evening Transcript
The paragon of all Unity systems is the Vedanta philosophy of India , and the paragon of Vedantist missionaries was the late Swami Vivekananda who visited our land some years ago.I have just been reading some of Vivekananda's address in England ,which I had not seen. The man is simply a wonder for oratorical power... the Swami is an honor to humanity.
---- William James, ( Harvard professor, philosopher,psychologist and author.)
Aurobindo , the greatest Indian philosopher of the 20th century :
The going forth of Vivekananda as the heroic soul destined to take the world between his two hands and change it was the first visible sign that India was awake.
---Aurobindo
Vivekananda was a soul of puissance if ever there was one, a very lion among men, but the definitive work he has left behind is quite incommensurate with our impression of his creative might and energy. We perceive his influence still working gigantically, we know not well how, we know not well where, in something that is not yet formed, something leonine, grand, intuitive, upheaving that has entered the soul of India and we say, "Behold, Vivekananda still lives in the soul of his Mother and in the souls of her children.
--Sri Aurobindo--1915 in Vedic Magazine.
Romain Rolland, the French savant,novelist, essayist and Nobel Prize winner :
Vivekananda's words are great music, phrases in the style of Beethoven, stirring rhythms like the march of Handel Choruses. The present leaders of India: Gandhi , Aurobindo, and Tagore, have grown, flowered, and born fruit under the double constellation of the Swan ( Ramakrishna) and the Eagle( Vivekananda) -- a fact publicly acknowledged by Gandhi and Aurobindo.
--- Romain Rolland
I cannot touch these sayings of his, scattered as they are through the pages of this book at thirty years' distance, without receiving a thrill through my body like an electric shock. And what shock, what transport, must have been produced when, in burning words, they issued from the lips of the hero!
--- Romain Rolland
"Swami Vivekananda's writings need no introduction from anybody. They make their own irresistible appeal."
---Mahatma Gandhi
I have gone through his works very carefully, and after having gone through them, the love that I had for my country became a thousand-fold.
---Mahatma Gandhi
I cannot write about Vivekananda without going into raptures. Few indeed could comprehend or fathom him even among those who had the privilege of becoming intimate with him. His personality was rich, profound and complex... Reckless in his sacrifice, unceasing in his activity, boundless in his love, profound and versatile in his wisdom, exuberant in his emotions, merciless in his attacks but yet simple as a child, he was a rare personality in this world of ours. I can go for hours and yet fail to do the slightest justice to that great man . He was so great, so profound , so complex. He was a Yogi of the highest spiritual level in direct communion with the truth , who consecrated his whole life to the moral and spiritual uplift of humanity.
---Subhash Chandra Bose (architect along with Gandhi of India's freedom movement).
The qualities I most admire in Vivekananda are his activity,manliness and courage ... He spoke up and acted. For this, all must honor him , who, whatever be their own religious beliefs , value sincerity, truth and courage, which are the badges of every noble character.
---Sir John Woodroffe.
If you want to know India, study Vivekananda. In him everything is positive and nothing negative.
---Rabindranath Tagore, Nobel prize winner, philosopher, composer, novelist.
Swami Vivekananda will be remembered as one of the most significant figures in the whole history of Indian religion, comparable in importance to such great teachers as Shankara and Ramanuja.Since the days of the Indian missionaries who travelled in south-east Asia and China preaching Buddhism and Hinduism more than a thousand years earlier, he was the first Indian religious teacher to make such an impression outside India.
---Arthur Llewellyn Basham
Where can you find a man like him ? Study what he wrote, and learn from his teachings, for if you do , you will gain immense strength. Take advantage of the fountain of wisdom,of Spirit , and of fire that flowed through Vivekananda!
--- Jawaharlal Nehru
Men like Sri Ramakrishna, men like Swami Vivekananda and men like Mahatma Gandhi are great unifying forces , great constructive geniuses of the world not only in regard to the particular teachings that they taught, but their approach to the world and their conscious and unconscious influence on it is vitally important to us.
---- Jawaharlal Nehru ( first Indian prime minister and co-founder of the non-aligned movement)
A great yogi, a spiritual teacher,a religious leader,a writer, an orator and , above all, the most selfless worker for humanity---that was Swami Vivekananda. I had the honor of living with this great Swami in India, in England, and in America. I lived and travelled with day after day and night after night and watched his character for nearly twenty years, and I stand here to assure you that I have not found another like him in these three continents. As a man ,his character was pure and spotless ; as a philosopher , he was the greatest of all Eastern and Western philosophers .In him I found the ideal of Karma Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, Raja Yoga and Jnana Yoga ; he was like the living example of Vedanta in all its living branches.
---Swami Abhedananda
" It may be said that when he began to speak it was of 'the religious ideas of the Hindus' ,but when he ended ,Hinduism had been created. "
---Margaret Noble
The truths he preaches would have been as true,had he never been born. Nay more, they would have been equally authentic.The difference would have lain in their difficulty of access , in their want of modern clearness and incisiveness of statement, and in their loss of modern coherence and unity.Had he not lived,texts that today will carry the bread of life to thousands might have remained the obscure disputes of scholars.He taught with authority , and not as one of the Pundits. For he himself had plunged to the depths of the realisation which he preached , and he came back like Ramanuja only to tell its secrets to the pariah, the outcast and the foreigner.
---Margaret Noble
Even now, a hundred years after the birth of Swami Vivekananda, it is very difficult to evauate his importance in the scale of world history. It is certainly far greater than any Western historian or most Indian historians would have suggested at the time of his death. The passing of the years and the many stupendous and unexpected events which have occurred since then suggests that in centuries to come he will be remembered as one of the main moulders of the modern world, especially as far as Asia is concerned, and as one of the most significant figures in the whole history of Indian religion...
--- Arthur Llewellyn Basham.
Last edited by niranjan : 11-27-2007 at 07:50 AM.
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