The best way to start doing something is to start doing something.
— Vernon Howard
You can't come into this world without becoming its victim.
Humanity appreciates truth about as much as a squirrel appreciates silver.
In order to reach home, where you have the guidance of cosmic insight, you must first depart from your present location. You cannot remain in the noisy city of your own vanities and expect to know what to do. Cosmic knowledge and personal vanity do not mingle.
Start your day in a upward direction, and the rest of the day will follow the uphill path.
Evil is an attack against human spiritual development and enlightenment. All evil, badness, neurosis - it has one motive and one motive only, which is to destroy - to destroy your chance of arising above yourself.
Some folks hesitate to seize additional strength because they think it wrong or dangerous to be a powerful individual. Somehow they have acquired the false notion that tyranny or dictatorship or cruelty are the outcomes of a powerful personality. These characteristics are not power. They are weaknesses disguised as power.
Question the motives of those who make requests of you. Discover what they really want. You may not want to give it.
Problems are cured by facing their cause.
People appreciate and follow the person who can persuade them properly. Make that person you.
The fact is, everything we want or yearn for is won through other people. No man on an island is happy; he is merely existing. The joyous life is the one filled with rich relationships.
We are slaves to whatever we don't understand.
Our freedom can be measured by the number of things we can walk away from.
Can you think of anything more permanently elating than to know that you are on the right road at last?
It is a true miracle when a man finally sees himself as his only opposition.
We clearly realize that freedom's inner kingdom cannot be touched by exterior attacks.
We must become acquainted with our emotional household: we must see our feelings as they actually are, not as we assume they are. This breaks their hypnotic and damaging hold on us.
Never fear to deliberately walk through dark places, for that is how you reach the light on the other side.
Your friends will be as careless with your life as they are with their own.
We must get to the point in our lives. What is the point? To become a new kind of man or woman, having inner command and outer excellence.
Truth never pleads or compromises or wavers. It invites and awaits your acceptance.
Tell a man that he is putting on a stage performance in order to get what he wants, and he will irritably reject your observation. Why? Because most people go through life as cunning actors with a permanent horror of getting found out.
For every problem or confusion and for every desire or ambition there is an available force waiting for your call.
Whatever you want, you have the power to attain it. The man or woman who calmly and matter-of-factly accepts this pronouncement at face value will soon find himself working magical accomplishments far beyond that which he previously dreamed possible.
Make it your profitable habit to carefully study facial expressions. You can see the entire human drama in a face; you can tell its owner's history.
The great solution to all human problems is individual inner transformation.
Make it absolutely clear to yourself what you want from other people. That is really half the secret for drawing your desire to you in the shortest possible time and with the least amount of effort.
A truly strong person does not need the approval of others any more than a lion needs the approval of sheep.
Remember above all that mental stability comes by examining the contents of the mind, not by avoidence.
What you really want for yourself is always trying to break through, just as a cooling breeze flows through an open window on a hot day. Your part is to open the windows of your mind.
All forms of self-defeating behavior are unseen and unconscious, which is why their existence is denied.
Learn to see things as they really are, not as we imagine they are.
Freedom begins as we become conscious of it.
We are enslaved by anything we do not consciously see. We are freed by conscious perception.
The following terms all mean one and the same thing: God, goodness, mental health, truth, decency, happiness, freedom, reality, peace, love, sensibleness.
What most men call their conscience is imaginary virtue switching left or right according to self-interest.
Remember that cosmic fact and mental myth cannot occupy the same place at the same time, any more than two hands can occupy the same glove. So choose what is truly right for you.
You are not condemned for anything, but you are also not excused from anything. See these two ideas together at the same time, and a powerful third force for self-awakening is created.
Evil wants you to think that its power is absolute, endless. It wants to so make you quake and quiver that all you'll do is fall down and worship it.
It is not the strong who are dangerous to the world and to themselves. It is the weak and the inadequate who threaten - and sometimes destroy - mankind's peace and prosperity.
A certain number of people seek power over other people in a desperate attempt to find themselves. They fail, for self-discovery is spiritual in nature, not social or political. Authoritatively telling other people what to do is their distraction from an inner emptiness they can never fill.
Learn to see a problem from a higher level of understanding. Then, it dissolves before your eyes.
Do not resist a new idea. Be quietly receptive. Go along with it, even unwillingly at first. Sooner or later, it will reveal itself as your ally.
Personal power gives you a sense of accomplishment. It enables you to live fully and zestfully. It provides you with a mature reason for liking yourself better. To state it another way, it is the mark of a healthy and well-adjusted individual to seek self-advancement by mastering his human relations.
Truth is not a matter of personal viewpoint.
Study carefully the law of cause and effect.
A clear understanding of negative emotions dismisses them.
To change what you get, you must change who you are.
Just be honest with yourself. That opens the door.
We are exactly where we have chosen to be.
