The greatest discovery of any generation is that a human can alter his life by altering his attitude.
Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.
the exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess sucess is our national disease
Wisdom is seeing something in a non-habitual manner.
There is something almost shocking in the notion of so chaste a function carrying this Kantian hurlyburly in her womb.
An outree explanation, violating all our preconceptions, would never pass for a true account of a novelty. We should scratch round industriously till we found something less excentric.
The art of being wise is knowing what to overlook.
we have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood
Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.
If merely ‘feeling good’ could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience.
It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all.
In order to disprove the assertion that all crows are black, one white crow is sufficient.
Science, like life, feeds on its own decay. New facts burst old rules; then newly divined conceptions bind old and new together into a reconciling law.
Our intelligence cannot wall itself up alive, like a pupa in a chrysalis. It must at any cost keep on speaking terms with the universe that engendered it.
We are like islands in the sea, separate on the surface but connected in the deep.
Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.
To change one’s life: 1. Start immediately. 2. Do it flamboyantly. 3. No exceptions.
Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, ‘This is the real me,’ and when you have found that attitude, follow it.
Each of us literally chooses, by his way of attending to things, what sort of universe he shall appear to himself to inhabit.
Why may we not be in the universe, as our dogs and cats are in our drawingrooms and libraries?
Selection is the very keel on which our mental ship is built. And in this case of memory its utility is obvious. If we remembered everything, we should on most occasions be as ill off as if we remembered nothing.
In certain diseased conditions consciousness is a mere spark, without memory of the past or thought of the future, and with the present narrowed down to some one simple emotion or sensation of the body.
No fact in human nature is more characteristic than its willingness to live on a chance. The existence of the chance makes the difference… between a life of which the keynote is resignation and a life of which the keynote is hope.
A man’s Self is the sum total of all that he can call his, not only his body and his psychic powers, but his clothes and his house.
We know the meaning so long as no one asks us to define it.
Beyond the very extremity of fatigue distress, amounts of ease and power that we never dreamed ourselves to own, sources of strength habitually not taxed at all, because habitually we never push through the obstruction
Why should we think upon things that are lovely Because thinking determines life. It is a common habit to blame life upon the environment. Environment modifies life but does not govern life. The soul is stronger than its surroundings.
A new position of responsibility will usually show a man to be a far stronger creature than was supposed.
Belief and doubt are living attitudes, and involve conduct on our part. Our only way, for example, of doubting, or refusing to believe, that a certain thing is, is continuing to act as if it were not.
Most people, probably, are in doubt about certain matters ascribed to their past. They may have seen them, may have said them, done them, or they may only have dreamed or imagined they did so.
Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not.
Much of what we call evil can often be converted into a bracing and tonic good by a simple change of the sufferer’s inner attitude from one of fear to one of fight
There are no differences but differences of degree between different degrees of difference and no difference.
The question of being is the darkest in all philosophy.
All religions and spiritual traditions begin with the cry “Help!
To give up pretensions is as blessed a relief as to get them ratified.
The greatest discovery of our generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind. As you think, so shall you be.
There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.
Philosophy lives in words, but truth and fact well up into our lives in ways that exceed verbal formulation.
Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequence of any misfortune.
Be willing to have it so acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.
Men habitually use only a small part of the powers which they possess and which they might use under appropriate circumstances.
Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.
Fear of life in one form or another is the great thing to exorcise.
Man lives by habits indeed but what he lives for is thrill and excitements. … From time immemorial war has been … the supremely thrilling excitement.
We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood.
When you have to make a choice and don’t make it that is in itself a choice.
There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.
Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.
Faith is one of the forces by which men live the total absence of it means collapse.
The first thing to learn in intercourse with others is non-interference with their own peculiar ways of being happy provided those ways do not assume to interfere with ours.
Genius in truth means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.
With mere good intentions hell is proverbially paved.
Action may not always bring happiness but there is no happiness without action.
The emotions are not always subject to reason … but they are always subject to action. When thoughts do not neutralize an undesirable emotion action will.
The greatest use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.
The God of many men is little more than their court of appeal against the damnatory judgement passed on their failures by the opinion of the world.
Action may not always bring happiness but there is no happiness without action.
An unlearned carpenter of my acquaintance once said in my hearing: ‘There is very little difference between one man and another but what there is is very important.’
An idea to be suggestive must come to the individual with the force of a revelation.
Every time a resolve or fine glow of feeling evaporates without bearing fruit it is worse than a chance lost it works to hinder future emotions from taking the normal path of discharge.
Impulse without reason is not enough and reason without impulse is a poor makeshift.
Life is one long struggle between conclusions based on abstract ways of conceiving cases and opposite conclusions prompted by our instinctive perception of them.
The thinker philosophizes as the lover loves. Even were the consequences not only useless but harmful he must obey his impulse.
The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.
Lives based on having are less free than lives based either on doing or on being.
Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed.
Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.
The unrest which keeps the never-stopping clock metaphysics going is the thought that the non-existence of this world is just as possible as its existence.
Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create that fact.
Our belief at the beginning of a doubtful undertaking is the one thing that ensures the successful outcome of our venture.
The greatest discovery of my generation is that man can alter his life simply by altering his attitude of mind.
If you want a quality act as if you already had it.
The exercise of prayer in those who habitually exert it must be regarded by us doctors as the most adequate and normal of all the pacifiers of the mind and calmers of the nerves.
The instinct of ownership is fundamental in man’s nature.
The instinct of ownership is fundamental in man’s nature.
Seek out that particular mental attitude which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive along with which comes the inner voice which says “This is the real me ” and when you have found that attitude follow it.
Each of us is in fact what he is almost exclusively by virtue of his imitative-ness.
The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.
Need and struggle are what excite and inspire us our hour of triumph is what brings the void.
The exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess Success is our national disease.
So far war has been the only force that can discipline a whole community and until an equivalent discipline is organized I believe that war must have its way.
The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.
Footnotes the little dogs yapping at the heels of the text.
The god whom science recognizes must be a God of universal laws exclusively, a God who does a wholesale, not a retail business. He cannot accommodate his processes to the convenience of individuals.
Whenever you’re in conflict with someone, there is one factor that can make the difference between damaging your relationship and deepening it. That factor is attitude.
It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome.
The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.
There must be something solemn, serious, and tender about any attitude which we denominate religious. If glad, it must not grin or snicker; if sad, it must not scream or curse.
There is but one cause of human failure. And that is man’s lack of faith in his true Self.
Most people never run far enough on their first wind to find out they’ve got a second.
The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.
The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour.
Action may not bring happiness but there is no happiness without action.
How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive of all they do, and of all they are willing to endure.
We are all ready to be savage in some cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause.
The aim of a college education is to teach you to know a good man when you see one.
If you want a quality, act as if you already had it.
If you care enough for a result, you will most certainly attain it.
Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system. Our thoughts and beliefs pass, so long as nothing challenges them, just as bank-notes pass so long as nobody refuses them.
The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.
The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.
Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.
Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is theoretically possible.
It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all. And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true.
The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.
A chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and life is after all a chain.
Why should we think upon things that are lovely? Because thinking determines life. It is a common habit to blame life upon the environment. Environment modifies life but does not govern life. The soul is stronger than its surroundings.
This life is worth living, we can say, since it is what we make it.
The greatest use of a life is to spend it on something that will outlast it.
To change ones life: Start immediately. Do it flamboyantly.
If you believe that feeling bad or worrying long enough will change a past or future event, then you are residing on another planet with a different reality system.