Building a successful life is much like building anything else: it should be thoroughly thought about in advance and then carried through to completion.
Everything depends on attitude. We are ambitious or lazy, enthusiastic or dull, loyal or undependable, according to our attitude. We get good grades or poor grades - according to our attitudes. Discouragement is an attitude. Lack of industry is an attitude. Failure to follow instructions is an attitude. attitude
The best way to improve our lives is to improve our thoughts.
It is a great paradox - almost everyone wants to improve his circumstances but almost no one wants to improve himself.
When the Lord starts out to make an oak tree, he takes a hundred years to do it in, but he can make a pumpkin in 90 days. More or less life is like that. We must choose whether we desire to become and oak tree or a pumpkin.
Hang on the walls of your mind the memory of your successes. Take counsel of your strength, not your weakness. Think of the good jobs you have done. For whenever excellence is recounted, it is increased.
The greatest of all our human concepts is the immortality of the personality and the eternal glory of the human soul. Throughout eternity you will be yourself and I will be myself, with quickened senses amplified powers of perception, and vastly increased capacity for reason, understanding, love, and happiness, all of which are qualities we may develop now. Our machines wear out, our barns fall down, and our substance goes back to the dust, but our finest collection of personal qualities will have eternal life.
One of the greatest possible sins would be to return to God the life which he has given us with our abilities undiscovered and our talents undeveloped an unutilized. One of Jesus most bitter rebukes was given to him who buried his talents in the ground.
All temptations can be handled easily when we know how, because no temptation is a temptation at all unless we are entertaining it.
We insist on near perfection in everyone except ourselves. But if our course is questioned we become offended.
Satan has no power over us except as we give it to him. God never forces us to do right, and Satan has no power to force us to do wrong.
We are all human magnets. Our deeds, attitudes and thoughts attract in kind. Gets back with interest exactly what he sends.
Everyone has a right to be interested in himself, and I am confident that God wants us to be interested in ourselves first; that is, the first soul that anyone should bring to God should be his own soul. We cannot do very much for anyone else until we have first done something for ourselves. That is, it is pretty difficult to give someone else an education unless we have some education ourselves. It is pretty hard to get someone else to think unless we ourselves are thinkers.
It is a serious mistake to judge God within the narrow limits of our own understanding and abilities.
The greatest opportunity of our lives is to wake ourselves up and get going. There is so much to be done and so little time to do it. We should impress ourselves with the seriousness of slothfulness.
You should always have 2 books...the one you're reading and the one you're writing.
Successful people follow successful patterns.
Man is a thinking being; what and how we think largely determines what we are and what we will become.
We can cross the rivers of doubt and discouragement on the bridge of faith even before we get to them
If I were asked to give the best idea of which I am capable, it would be that we should get out of the junk business and then start laying up treasures in heaven.
Life begins when we begin and each day we ought to be born again.
Those who wallow around in the sickness of their immorality and degeneracy get very little joy out of life here and certainly not much promise is held out for them hereafter.
Treasures in heaven are more permanent. They are more satisfying. There are only two reasons why we are not as successful as we would like to be in laying up earthly treasures. One is that we sometimes get into the wrong business; and the second reason is that even though we may be in the right business, we do not always work at it effectively. Interestingly enough, these are the same reasons why we fail in laying up treasures in heaven.
Perhaps punctuality is a quality made even more valuable because it is found in so few people. Punctuality is not usually thought of in our day as a major virtue.
When you want knowledge and understanding as badly as you wanted air, you won't have to ask anyone to give it to you.
