We lift ourselves by our thought, we climb upon our vision of ourselves. If you want to enlarge your life, you must first enlarge your thought of it and of yourself. Hold the ideal of yourself as you long to be, always, everywhere - your ideal of what you long to attain - the ideal of health, efficiency, success.
Interpretation
Our thoughts shape our lives, and to achieve greatness, we must first envision it for ourselves.
This quote emphasizes the power of thought and vision in shaping our reality. It suggests that in order to achieve our desired outcomes in life, we must cultivate a strong and positive self-image, envision what we wish to attain, and consistently strive to embody that ideal. The focus is on the importance of mental frameworks and personal ideals in the pursuit of success and fulfillment.
In practice
In a motivational speech to inspire students to dream big and envision their futures.
Opportunity is latent in the very foundation of human society. Opportunity is everywhere about us. But the preparation to seize upon the opportunity, and to make the most of it, is to be made by every one for himself ... he will be self-made or never made.
You know from past experiences that whenever you have been driven to the wall, or thought you were, you have extricated yourself in a way which you never would have dreamed possible had you not been put to the test. The trouble is that in your everyday life you don't go deep enough to tap the divine mind within you.
You cannot measure a man by his failures. You must know what use he makes of them. What did they mean to him. What did he get out of them.
Something greater than wealth, grander even than fame — that manhood, character, stand for success, and that nothing else really does.
Many a man has finally succeeded only because he has failed after repeated efforts. If he had never met defeat he would never have known any great victory.
If our dreams are sincere desires to achieve, not mere pipe-dreams, there is something deep within ourselves which comes out to meet them and helps to make them realities.
Patience and submission are very carefully to be distinguished from cowardice and indolence. We are not to repine, but we may lawfully struggle; for the calamities of life, like the necessities of Nature, are calls to labor and diligence.
A complete man should need no auxiliaries to his personal presence.
Outsiders always look for a reason to explain why they are not inside. They never look in the mirror. Let's face it, the profession I'm in is a very simple and a very cruel one. There is no way that you can create a career for someone without talent and no way to stop a career of someone with talent.
The greatest victory in life is to rise above the material things that we once valued most
Believe those who seek the truth, doubt those who find it; doubt all, but do not doubt yourself.
Small people delight in what they call consistency-that is, it gives them immense pleasure to say that they believe now exactly as they did ten years ago. This simply amounts to a certificate that they have not grown-that they have not developed-and that they know just as little now as they ever did. The highest possible conception of consistency is to be true to the knowledge of today, without the slightest reference to what your opinion was years ago.
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