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Swami Vivekananda Thoughts on Love

A collection of thoughts and quotes of Swami Vivekananda on love.

The first test of love is that it knows no bargaining. Love is always the giver and never the taker. The second test is that love knows no fear. The third test is that it is always the highest ideal.

All expansion is life, all contraction is death. All love is expansion, all selfishness is contraction.

Love binds, love makes for that oneness. You become one, the mother with the child, families with the city, the whole world becomes one with the animals. For love is Existence, God Himself; and all this is the manifestation of that One Love, more or less expressed. The difference is only in degree, but it is the manifestation of that One Love throughout.

It is love and love alone that I preach and I base my teachings on the great Vedantic truth of the sameness and omnipresence of the Soul of the Universe.

Out of long churning comes butter, and this butter is God. Men of heart get the ‘butter’, and the ‘buttermilk’ is left for the intellectual. These are all preparations for the heart, for that love, for that intense sympathy appertaining to the heart. It is not at all necessary to be educated or learned to get to God.

All of the energies of the human body and mind, howsoever they may express themselves, have the Lord as their one goal, as their Ekayana. All loves and all passions of the human heart must go to God. He is the Beloved. Whom else can this heart love? He is the most beautiful, the most sublime, He is beauty itself, sublimity itself. Who in this universe is more beautiful than He? Who in this universe is more fit to become the husband than He? Who in this universe is fitter to be loved than He? So let Him be the husband, let Him be the Beloved.

We ought not to be fanatics of any kind, because fanaticism is opposed to love. You hear fanatics glibly saying, ‘I do not hate the sinner. I hate the sin,’ but I am prepared to go any distance to see the face of that man who can really make a distinction between the sin and the sinner. It is easy to say so. If we can distinguish well between quality and substance, we may become perfect men. It is not easy to do this. And further, the calmer we are and the less disturbed our nerves, the more shall we love and the better will our work be

Swami Vivekananda