Rabindranath Tagore wrote in a poem “কথা কও, কথা কও, অনাদি-অতীত-অনন্ত রাতে, কেন বসে চেয়ে রও, কথা কও, কথা কও” (Rough translation: s, speak, why are you silent in this eternal night, speak)
That is the our topic of this article. In this article we’ll make a collection of Swami Vivekananda‘s quotes on Words.
- A word is uttered, and we do not wait to consider its meaning; we jump to a conclusion immediately. It is the sign of weakness of the Chitta.[Source]
- Every word is sacred and eternal, eternal as the soul, without beginning and without end.[Source]
- Every word is the power of God.[Source]
- In this world everything depends upon one’s words.[Source]
- Sweet words are heard afar.[Source]
- The network of words is like a huge forest in which the human mind loses itself and finds no way out.[Source]
- The word is only the external manifestation on the material plane.[Source]
- Think of the power of words! They are a great force in higher philosophy as well as in common life. Day and night we manipulate this force without thought and without inquiry. [Source]
- Those who deal too much in words and let the mind run always in the force of words lose the spirit.[Source]
- “Thought is the power of the word, the word is the expression of the thought,” say Mimâmsakas, a Hindu philosophical sect.[Source]
- Wherever there are sensations, ideas, emotions, there must be words.[Source]
- Words are not necessary. Better is silent prayer.[Source]
- Words are only the external forms in which things come.[Source]
- Words are only a mode of mind acting on mind.[Source]
- Words are secondary. Thoughts live, they travel far.[Source]
- You have heard that Christ said, ‘My words are spirit and they are life’. So are my words spirit and life; they will burn their way into your brain and you will never get away from them![Source]
Power of words
From Addresses on Bhakti-Yoga—[Source]
All of you have heard of the power of words, how wonderful they are! Every book — the Bible, the Koran, and the Vedas — is full of the power of words. Certain words have wonderful power over mankind. Again, there are other forms, known as symbols. Symbols have great influence on the human mind. But great symbols in religion were not created indefinitely. We find that they are the natural expressions of thought. We think symbolically. All our words are but symbols of the thought behind, and different people have come to use different symbols without knowing the reason why. It was all behind, and these symbols are associated with the thoughts; and as the thought brings the symbol outside, so the symbol, on the contrary, can bring the thought inside. So one portion of Bhakti tells about these various subjects of symbols and words and prayers.
Words and Vedas
From a lecture delivered in San Francisco on 26 May 1900—[Source]
If you ask the orthodox Hindu what the meaning is of these gods in the Vedas, [he will not be able to give any satisfactory answer]. The priests sing these hymns and pour libations and offering into the fire. When you ask the orthodox Hindu the meaning of this, he says that words have the power to produce certain effects. That is all. There is all the natural and supernatural power that ever existed. The Vedas are simply words that have the mystical power to produce effects if the sound intonation is right. If one sound is wrong it will not do. Each one must be perfect. [Thus] what in other religions is called prayer disappeared and the Vedas became the gods. So you see the tremendous importance that was attached to the words of the Vedas.
