The pessimist waits for better times, and expects to keep on waiting; the optimist goes to work with the best that is at hand now, and proceeds to create better times.
Happiness, however, is not the result of any one single cause. It is the result of many ideal states of being grouped together into one harmonious whole.
Be too big for worry and too noble for anger.
What you admire in others will develop in yourself. Therefore, to love the ordinary in any one is to become ordinary, while to love the noble and the lofty in all minds is to grow into the likeness of that which is noble and lofty.
To keep any great nation up to a high standard of civilization there must be enough superior characters to hold the balance of power, but the very moment the balance of power gets into the hands of second-rate men and women, a decline of that nation is inevitable.
Make all your friends feel there is something in them.
We are here to become great men and women, and with that purpose in view, we must eliminate everything in our religion and philosophy that tends to make the human mind a dependent weakling. If you would serve God and be truly religious, do not kneel before God, but learn to walk with God, and do something tangible every day to increase the happiness of mankind. This is religion that is worth while, and it is such religion alone that can please the Infinite.
A man who is morally clean, other things being equal, has in every instance, greater agility, greater capacity, and greater endurance by far than the man who is not. While the latter is wasting his creative energies in useless pleasures, as well as in disease producing habits, the former is turning all of his creative energy into ability and genius, and the result is evident.
There is a faith that is faith; there is a faith that can do all things; there is a faith that moves mountains, whatever those mountains may be; there is a faith that rises above every obstacle in the world and reaches the greatest heights that the mind of man may have in view; and it is this faith that is the hidden secret.
To give so much time to improving yourself that you have no time to criticize others.
Life is growth and the object of right thinking is to promote that growth.
Your thought will be as brilliant as the brilliancy you think into your thought, and how much brilliancy you will think into your thought will depend upon how high your realization of brilliancy happens to be at the time. When your thinking is brilliant, you will be brilliant, but if your thinking is not brilliant you will not be brilliant, no matter how brilliant you may think you are.
Faith and belief have nothing in common; they are as different as darkness and light.
Every faculty that naturally belongs to the human mind is latent in every mind, and it can be awakened and developed, provided the proper laws are faithfully applied.
Count nothing lost; even the day that sees “no worthy action done” may be a day of preparation and accumulation that will add greatly to the achievements of tomorrow. Many a day was made famous because nothing was done the day before.
A change of scene will not produce a change of thought in the master mind unless he so elects.
Press on eternally to the higher and larger realization of absolute goodness, and leave results to the law. More and more real goodness will naturally appear in all your thoughts and actions. You will therefore become good, not by thinking that you are good, but by thinking thoughts that are created in the image and likeness of that which is good.
You can lead mankind into the gold mines of the mind and into the diamond fields of the soul, and the secret lies in the words you speak.
But here we may well ask what we are living for – if we are living to give up to the influence of environment, visible or invisible, or if we are living to attain such full control over the powers and talents that are within us, that we can not only control, modify and perfect environment, but also so perfectly control ourselves that we can become all that nature intends that we should become.
Promise yourself to forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future. To wear a cheerful countenance at all times and give every living creature you meet a smile.
Promise yourself to give so much time to the improvement of yourself that you have no time to criticize others. To be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear, and too happy to permit the presence of trouble.