Wallace D. Wattles

The very best thing you can do for the whole world is to make the most of yourself.

You can have nothing to fear.

You must cease from looking at human mistakes and look at successes; cease from seeing faults and see virtues.

The average person’s idea of a great man, rather than one who serves, is of one who succeeds in getting himself served.

Because all things are necessary to man’s complete unfoldment, all things in human life are the work of God.

The really great man is often considered selfish by a large group of people who are connected with him and who feel that he might bestow upon them more benefits than he does.

The teaching of Jesus, if properly understood, would do away with organized temple worship altogether.

Your first duty to God, to yourself, and to the world is to make yourself as great a personality, in every way, as you possibly can.

It is within the power of every man to become great.

I will obey my soul and be true to that within me which is highest.

Do every common act as a god should do it; speak every word as a god should speak it.

Man must cast out of himself everything which separates him from God. He must will to live the divine life, and he must rise above all moral temptations; he must forsake every course of action that is not in accord with his highest ideals.

The world needs demonstration more than it needs teaching.

You must have absolute faith in your own perceptions of truth. Never act in haste or hurry; be deliberated in everything; wait until you know the true way.

When you feel deeply that a certain act is the right act, do it and have perfect faith that the consequences will be good.

Always do what you feel deeply in the within to be the true thing to do.

Obey your soul, have perfect faith in yourself. Never think of yourself with doubt or distrust, or as one who makes mistakes.

There is no hurry. There is only God, and all is well with the world.

Hurry is a manifestation of fear; he who fears not has plenty of time. If you at with perfect faith in your own perceptions of truth, you will never be too late or too early; and nothing will go wrong.

Nothing can go wrong in this world but yourself ; and you can go wrong only by getting into the wrong mental attitude.

So surely as you find yourself in the mental attitude of haste, just so surely may you know that you are out of the mental attitude of greatness. Hurry and fear will instantly cut your connect with the universal mind.

Remember that poise and power are inseparably associated. The calm and balanced mind is the strong and great mind; the hurried and agitated mind is the weak one.

In all your relations to men be great, just, generous, courteous, and kindly. The great are never otherwise.

Greatness is attained only by the thinking of great thoughts.

You are not mentally developed by what you read, but by what you think about what you read.

Thinking is the hardest and most exhausting of all labor; and hence many people shrink from it.

Read less and think more. Read about great things and think about great questions and issues.

Thinking is growth; we cannot think without growing.

There is, as Emerson says, some central idea or conception of yourself by which all the facts of your life are arranged and classified. Change this central idea and you change the arrangement or classification of all the fact and circumstances of your life.

Do not merely think that you are great; think that you are great now. Do not think that you will begin to act in a great way at some future time; begin now.

Do not talk about your greatness; you are really, in essential nature, no great than those around you.

Do not try to convert others to your point of view, except by holding it and living accordingly.

Whatever you habitually think yourself to be, that you are. You must form, now, a greater and better habit; you must form a conception of yourself as a being of limitless power, and habitually think that you are that being. It is the habitual, not the periodical thought that decides your destiny.

You must always learn to see yourself as a great advancing soul.

I will trust and not be afraid.

You have that within you which is ever impelling you toward the upward and advancing way; and that impelling something is the divine Principle of Power; you must obey it without question.

Intellect helps us to see the best means and manner of doing the right thing, but intellect never shows us the right thing.

By going back to your own center you can always find the pure idea of right for every relationship.

Abandon everything you have outgrown.

You still indulge in distrustful fears that things will go wrong, or that people will betray you, or mistreat you; get above all of them.

Let your thoughts be ruled by principle, and then live up to your thoughts.

You are a god in the company of gods and must conduct yourself accordingly.

There are no evil people; there are perfectly good people who are of the track, but they do not need condemnation or punishment; they only need to get upon the rails again.

You are already one with God; you want to become consciously aware of it.

I surrender myself to conscious unity with the highest.

A thought-form held in thinking substance is a reality; it is a real thing, whether it has yet become visible to mortal eye or not.

If you desire a thing, picture it clearly and hold the picture steadily in mid until it becomes a definite thought-form.

Set your ideal as near to perfection as your imagination is capable of forming the conception.

Fix upon your ideal of what you wish to make of yourself.

Do not pay too much attention to the advice or suggestions of those around you.

Close your ears to all adverse suggestions. Never mind if people call you a fool and a dreamer. Dream on.

Begin to do small things in a great way…You must put the whole power of your great soul into every act.

Become aware of and recognize fully the fact that the Principle of Power within you is God Himself. You must consciously identify yourself with the Highest.

If you will make the necessary effort you can develop any talent.

The brain does not make the man; the man makes the brain.

Wisdom is the essential basis of greatness.

Wisdom is the power to perceive the best ends to aim at and the best means for reaching those ends.

The man who is wise enough to know the right thing to do, who is good enough to wish to do only the right thing, and who is able and strong enough to do the right thing is a truly great man.

Wisdom is obtained by reading the mind of God.

The prophets and seers and great men and women, past and present, were made great by what they perceived from God, not by what they were taught by men.

Resolve that you will now lay aside all else and concentrate upon the attainment of conscious unity with God.

You can never become a great man or woman until you have overcome anxiety, worry, and fear. It is impossible for an anxious person, a worried one, or a fearful one to perceive truth; all things are distorted and thrown out of their proper relations by such mental states, and those who are in them cannot read the thoughts of God.

Nothing was ever in any man that is not in you; no man ever had more spiritual or mental power than you can attain, or did greater things than you can accomplish. You can become what you want to be.

You must lay aside your greed; have no unworthy motive in your desire to become rich and powerful. It is legitimate and right to desire riches, if you want them for the sake of your soul, but not if you desire them for the lists of the flesh.

Cast out pride and vanity; have no thought of trying to rule over others or of outdoing them.

To exercise some sort of control over others is the secret motive of every selfish person.

Cast out envy; you can have all that you want, and you need not envy any man what he has. Above all things, see to it that you do not hold malice or enmity toward any one; to do so cuts you off from the mind whose treasures you seek to make your own. Lay aside all narrow personal ambition and determine to seek the highest good.

'Without faith it is impossible to please God,' and without faith it is impossible for you to become great. The distinguishing characteristic of all really great men and women is an unwavering faith.

Faith—not a faith in one’s self or in one’s own powers but faith in principle; in the Something Great which upholds right, and which may be relied upon to give us the victory in due time. Without this faith it is not possible for any one to rise to real greatness.

You must learn to see the world as being produced by evolution; as a something which is evolving and becoming, not as a finished work.

This must be your point of view: that the world and all it contains is perfect, though not completed.

You must learn to see men and women…as perfect beings advancing to become complete.

There is not the least cause for worry about financial affairs; every person who wills to do so may rise above want, have all he needs, and become rich.

Genius is Omniscience flowing into man.

Genius is the union of man and God in the acts of the soul. Great men are always greater than their deeds. They are in connection with a reserve power that is without limit.

The purpose of life for man is growth, just as the purpose of life for trees and plants is growth. Trees and plants grow automatically and along fixed lines; man can grow as he will. Trees and plants can only develop certain possibilities and characteristics; man can develop any power which is or has been shown by any person anywhere. Nothing that is possible in spirit is impossible in flesh and blood. Nothing that man can think is impossible. Nothing that man can imagine is impossible of realization.

Nothing that is possible in spirit is impossible in flesh and blood. Nothing that man can think is impossible. Nothing that man can imagine is impossible of realization.

It is essential to his happiness that he should continually advance.

Every man comes into the world with a predisposition to grow along certain lines, and growth is easier for him along those lines than in any other way.

Every one will be something worth while, something rare, something perfect.

There is a genius in every man and woman, waiting to be brought forth.

The Principle of Power gives us just what we ask of it; if we only undertake little things, it only gives us power for little things; but if we try to do great things in a great way it gives us all the power there is.

No man has yet become so great in any faculty but that it is possible for some one else to become greater.

Whatever may be said in praise of poverty, the fact remains that it is not possible to live a really complete or successful life unless one is rich.

There is a science of getting rich, and it is an exact science, like algebra or arithmetic. There are certain laws which govern the process of acquiring riches, and once these laws are learned and obeyed by anyone, that person will get rich with mathematical certainty.

Every living thing must continually seek for the enlargement of its life, because life, in the mere act of living, must increase itself.

Get rich, that is the best way you can help the poor.

A man’s highest happiness is found in the bestowal of benefits on those he loves; love finds its most natural and spontaneous expression in giving.

There is never any hurry on the creative plane; and there is no lack of opportunity.

The answer to your prayer is not according to your faith while you are talking, but according to your faith while you are working.

You must form a clear and definite mental picture of what you want.

Every day is either a successful day or a failure; and it is the successful days which get you what you want. If everyday is a failure, you can never get rich; while if every day is a success, you cannot fail to get rich.

You cannot impress the mind of God by having a special Sabbath day set apart to tell Him what you want, and then forgetting Him the rest of the week.

If a doubt comes, cast it aside as a sin.

Wherever there is unexpressed possibility, or function not performed, there is unsatisfied desire. Desire is possibility seeking expression, or function seeking performance.

To do things in a way you want to do them, you will have to acquire the ability to think the way you want to think; this is the first step toward getting rich.

Faith—not a faith in one’s self or in one’s own powers but faith in principle; in the Something Great which upholds right, and which may be relied upon to give us the victory in due time. Without this faith it is not possible for any one to rise to real greatness.

Think of yourself as a perfect being among perfect beings, and meet every person as an equal, not as either a superior or an inferior.

Always do what you feel deeply in the within to be the true thing to do.

Do not meddle with the personal habits and practices of others, though they are your nearest and dearest; these things are none of your business. Nothing can be wrong but your own personal attitude; make that right and you will know that all else is right.