"Vivekanand's works are great music, phrases in the style of Beethoven, stirring rhythms like the march of Handel choruses. I cannot touch these sayings of his, scattered as they are through the pages of books at thirty years' distance, without receiving a thrill through my body like an electric shock. And what shocks, what transports must have been produced when in burning words they issued from the lips of the hero!" says the great French savant, Romain Rolland.
      Swami Vivekananda was as inspired a writer as a speaker. Here are some gems from his letters gathered mainly form the "Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda" publish by the Advaita ashrama, Mayavati. If only we can catch a spark from this roaring flame, our lives will stand transformed and the nation will take great strides in the path of glory to which She is surely destined.

• Be moral. Be brave. Be a heart-whole man. Strictly moral, brave unto desperation. Don't bother your head with religious theories. Only cowards sin, brave men never; no, not even in mind. Try to love anybody and everybody.
• Be a man and try to make those immediately under your care, brave, moral and sympathizing. No religion for you, my children, but morality and bravery. No cowardice, no sin, no crime, no weakness - the rest will come of itself. 
• Everything here appears good, the people are all gentlemen, but very much Westernized; and I am so thoroughly against every affectation of the western idea. 
• Everyone can play the role of a master, but it is very difficult to be a servant. 
• No one has the power to put a limit to God's infinite glory. No, not even God Himself has the power to make Himself limited.
• You must have strict morality. Deviate an inch from this and you are gone for ever.
• My children, the secret of religion is not in theories but in practice. To be good and to do good- that is the whole of religion.
• Man learns as he lives, and experience is the greatest teacher in the world.
• Calm and silent and steady work, and no newspaper humbug, no name-making, you must always remember.