Great Throughts Treasury

"Anybody can do just about anything with himself that he really wants to and makes up his mind to do. We are capable of greater things than we realize. How much one actually achieves depends largely on: 1. Desire. 2. Faith. 3. Persistent Effort. 4. Ability. But if you are lacking the first three factors, your ability will not balance out the lack. So concentrate on the first three and the results will amaze you."

"Attitudes are more important than facts."

"Believe you are defeated, believe it long enough, and it is likely to become a fact."

"Emotional tranquillity, refusal to worry, the attitude of happiness, zest for life, keeping control, having grit and courage - these are important factors in physical health and long life."

"Doubts tend to produce doubtful results."

"Fear is strong, but faith is stronger."

"Every one of us is entitled, I believe, to find his or her true self in this life."

"Enthusiasm is contagious."

"Sharpen your thinking about goal setting. Be realistic about the amount of time and effort that might be necessary. Make a commitment to excellence. Learn to distinguish between a goal and a wish. Prepare for ultimate goals by achieving your interim goals. Choose goals that will benefit others as well as yourself."

"Failure begins in your thoughts."

"Success at anything requires two vital ingredients: enthusiasm and perseverance. Both can be helped by the broad view that looks beyond temporary difficulties and disappointments to a great goal... Enthusiasm is the priceless quality that makes everything different."

"The fulfillment of your life can begin any day."

"Since it appears that helping someone produces a feeling of happiness, it follows that you can increase your happiness by simply adding to the number of times you perform an act of kindness."

"Trouble, difficulty and hardship are three great teachers. Fortunate is the person who in keeping company with them keeps his eyes, his ears and, better still, his mind open; they can teach him valuable things."

"We create the world in which we live by the thought patterns that activate our minds. It follows, therefore, that if we are to achieve lasting happiness, we will have to cultivate the thoughts that produce happiness... We become, to a great extent, like the thoughts we habitually think."

"The habit of dropping choice thoughts into consciousness and allowing them to permeate the mental structure results finally in a thought pattern that affects virtually the totality of one's life."

"When pain strikes, we often ask the wrong questions, such as, Why me? The right questions are, What can I learn from this? What can I do about it? What can I accomplish in spite of it?"

"What people think you expect of them, they will usually deliver."

"You are never alone."

"You should never entertain or express an idea unless you wish it to take form in your life... Thoughts and words can speak life or death to your future. Remember, lack thoughts and lack words tend to produce lack as fact."

"A good washing out of the mind can do wonders for anyone."

"Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot succeed. A sense of inferiority and inadequacy interferes with the attainment of your hopes, but self-confidence leads to self-realization and successful achievement."

"Your thoughts form your future. Thoughts externalize into actualization. You cannot see a thought, but you can trace its effect."

"All wisdom is not in the past."

"Although most of us probably attribute our problems to other people or to bad luck or to the circumstances around us, the truth is that we create our own success or failure."

"Happiness at last comes to those who never lose the excitement of going after new goals, who are forever wanting to achieve something better."

"How do you build confidence in yourself? Take your mind off the things that seem to be against you. Thinking about negative factors simply builds them up into a power they need not have."

"Prayer is always answered in one of three ways: no, yes, and wait awhile."

"It requires sixty-four facial muscles to frown and only fourteen to smile. So why overwork your face?"

"No one welcomes pain. But, rightly faced, it can bring about great good. And we can triumph over it."

"Take charge of your thoughts."

"One of my lifelong convictions is that death, far from being the end, is but the door to an existence larger and more glorious than any human conception."

"Positive thinkers get positive results because they appreciate the inestimable value of a day, this day, not the next day, but this day, and every day. Today offers at least sixteen hours that may be crammed full of opportunity, joy, excitement, achievement."

"The best way to learn anything is by doing."

"The individual who knows the score about life sees difficulties as opportunities."

"The longer I live the more I am convinced that neither age nor circumstance need to deprive us of energy and vitality."

"The man who lives for himself is a failure. Even if he gains much wealth, position or power he still is a failure. The man who lives for others has achieved true success."

"There is a basic law that like attracts like. That which you mentally project reproduces in kind and negative thoughts definitely attract negative results. Conversely, if a person habitually thinks optimistically and hopefully he activates life around him positively and thereby attracts to himself positive results. His positive thinking sets in motion creative forces, and success instead of eluding him flows toward him."

"There are three principal ways to get what we need: by work, by thought, and by prayer."

"“Every morning of the world I give thanks for all the wonderful things in my life,” declared a young man enthusiastically. “And do you know something? It’s strange indeed, but the more I give thanks, the more I have reason to be thankful. For, you see, blessings just pile up on me one after another like nobody’s business”... The more you practice the art of thankfulness, the more you have to be thankful for... The attitude of gratitude revitalizes the entire mental process by activating all other attitudes, thus stimulating creativity... Remember that praise and thanksgiving are the most powerful prayers of all."

"There is not doubt in my mind that mental and spiritual health are the foundation of physical health, harmonious relationships, and a happy and successful life."

"To practice the basic principles of good health, visualize yourself as sound, healthy and filled with vitality and boundless life of your Creator. Look upon yourself as the unique individual that you are. Get in harmony with the creative, life-giving, health-maintaining forces of the universe. Affirm peace, wholeness, and good health - and they will be yours."

"A person who reads and studies and converses on current events in science, philosophy, political will, in the process, escape from the dull self-centeredness, and his participatory awareness of life in its infinite vitality will tend to produce the excitement which is inherent in happiness. Unfortunately, thinking the interesting thoughts which create happiness is a disciplinary process which too few people employ."

"Today is yours. Seize it."

"Be sure your goal is a right one, for if it isn’t, it’s a wrong one, and nothing wrong every turns out right."

"All troubles end."

"Believe that you are receiving answers to your prayers. Belief tends to create that which is held in the mind by faith."

"Don’t do things the wrong way. Learn the right way. It’s easier because it’s right."

"Consider! Behind you lie the confusions and inadequacies of that remarkably over-rated period of human existence known as youth. Youth has vitality, its true; youth has a superabundance of “free energy.” But it has little else. It lacks poise. It lacks experience. Above all, it has neither judgment nor wisdom, the two qualities which make life supremely worth while... the rewards of self-knowledge are enormous... self-knowledge is the key to self-mastery... Calm, assured, integrated people have a way of making considerable impact on reality. By changing themselves, they change the world around them."

"Expect the best, and get it."