Sister Nivedita

• “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.”

• “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 mutual 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.”

– Sister Nivedita ( Oct 28, 1867 – Oct 13, 1911)

Sarah Ellen Waldo

• To know Vivekananda was to love him, and to know him well was to revere him.
  –S.E. Waldo
  Brooklyn NY, she helped edit some of the Swami’s major books and published lectures, including significantly, Raja Yoga. And it was her notes that form the basis of his Inspired Talks.
• His memory will never die in our hearts and our gratitude for his loving service to us can never fail. It is a priceless privilege to have known such a man. He was truly amahatman and did a great work, work that will long be an influence in the lives of his own countrymen as well as in those of his European and American friends. May he be for ever blessed!
  (Prabuddha Bharata, January 1906)