Vernon Howard

Remember above all that mental stability comes by examining the contents of the mind, not by avoidence.

We clearly realize that freedom's inner kingdom cannot be touched by exterior attacks.

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.

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.

Is the beam from a lighthouse affected by howling wind and rain? It remains perfectly steadfast and unaffected by the storm. Your true self is like that. Nothing can ever harm you once you are consciously aware that it is so.

Problems are cured by facing their cause.

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.

To change what you get you must change who you are.

Start your day in a upward direction, and the rest of the day will follow the uphill path.

Cruelty practiced as a matter of social principle or public policy and presented to the community as a means to a higher goal is the most obscene and decadent phenomenon of any civilization.

Just be honest with yourself. That opens the door.

The need to impress others causes half the world's woes. Don't add to them. Be real, not impressive.

People appreciate and follow the person who can persuade them properly. Make that person you.

It is a thousand times more sensible to climb one foot up the mountainside than to chatter for years about the mountaintop.

You can not escape a prison if you do not know youre in one.

You must dare to disassociate yourself from those who would delay your journey... Leave depart if not physically then mentally. Go your own way quietly undramatically and venture toward Trueness at last.

Always walk through life as if you have something new to learn and you will.

Our freedom can be measured by the number of things we can walk away from.

The following terms all mean one and the same thing: God, goodness, mental health, truth, decency, happiness, freedom, reality, peace, love, sensibleness.

We are exactly where we have chosen to be.

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.

For every problem or confusion and for every desire or ambition there is an available force waiting for your call.

You have succeeded in life when all you really want is only what you really need.

A clear understanding of negative emotions dismisses them.

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.

Truth is not a matter of personal viewpoint.

Study carefully the law of cause and effect.

We are enslaved by anything we do not consciously see. We are freed by conscious perception.

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.

You can't come into this world without becoming its victim.

Procrastination is illogical from every viewpoint. It is like the man who wanted to cross the stream, so he sat on the bank to wait for all the water to run by.

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.

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.

The great solution to all human problems is individual inner transformation.

Learn to see things as they really are, not as we imagine they are.

All forms of self-defeating behavior are unseen and unconscious, which is why their existence is denied.

Bitterness is the outcome of a wrong mental movement the attempt to force external events to conform to internal fantasy. The cure is to see fantasy as fantasy which will reveal it as neither necessary nor rewarding.

A truly strong person does not need the approval of others any more than a lion needs the approval of sheep.

The terrible immoralities are the cunning ones hiding behind masks of morality, such as exploiting people while pretending to help them.

It is a true miracle when a man finally sees himself as his only opposition.

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.

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.

Beauty is only skin deep, but it's a valuable asset if you're poor or haven't any sense.

Resistance to the disturbance is the disturbance.

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.

Quit thinking that you must halt before the barrier of inner negativity. You need not. You can crash through... whatever we see a negative state, that is where we can destroy it.

Can you think of anything more permanently elating than to know that you are on the right road at last?

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.

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.

Your central self is totally untouched by grief, confusion, desperation.

A perfect method for awakening is to examine the results of our daily actions. If they are harmful, we know we need more consciousness.

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.

When you're young, you don't have much sense. You don't have any reasoning power. You don't have any ability to take a blow, an insult, a hurt in the right way. There is no way a child can do that. All a child can do is feel the pang of it, the heartache of it.

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.

Learn this great secret of life: What people call interruption or disturbance to their routine is just as much a part of living as the routine. To split life into two parts, one called routine and the other called interruption, is to be caught between them.

The terrible immoralities are the cunning ones hiding behind masks of morality such as exploiting people while pretending to help them.

Your friends will be as careless with your life as they are with their own.

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.

Learn to see a problem from a higher level of understanding. Then, it dissolves before your eyes.

Humanity appreciates truth about as much as a squirrel appreciates silver.

Worried thought prevents practical thought which could prevent worried thought.

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.

We are slaves to whatever we don't understand.

What most men call their conscience is imaginary virtue switching left or right according to self-interest.

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.

Insight into the two selves within a man clears up many confusions and contradictions. It was our understanding that preceded our victory.

Freedom begins as we become conscious of it.

Question the motives of those who make requests of you. Discover what they really want. You may not want to give it.