Echoes

External things are not the problem. It's your assessment of them. Which you can erase right now.

Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.

If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches.

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.

In a word, neither death, nor exile, nor pain, nor anything of this kind is the real cause of our doing or not doing any action, but our inward opinions and principles.

It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.

You have power over your mind — not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.

It is not things that disturb us, but our judgments about things. For example, death is nothing terrible, for if it were, it would have appeared so to Socrates; but the judgment that death is terrible — that is the terrible thing.

It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience.

Men are disturbed, not by things, but by the principles and notions which they form concerning things.

We cannot avoid meeting great issues. All that we can determine for ourselves is whether we shall meet them well or ill.

Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.

The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.

If in our daily life we can smile, if we can be peaceful and happy, not only we, but everyone will profit from it. If we really know how to live, what better way to start the day than with a smile? Our smile affirms our awareness and determination to live in peace and joy. The source of a true smile is an awakened mind.

All that a man achieves and all that he fails to achieve is the direct result of his own thoughts.

He who remembers the evils he has undergone, and those that have threatened him, and the slight causes that have changed him from one state to another, prepares himself in that way for future changes and for recognizing his condition. The life of Caesar has no more to show us than our own; an emperor's or an ordinary man's, it is still a life subject to all human accidents.

Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.

Things are not so painful and difficult of themselves, but our weakness or cowardice makes them so.

The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.

The present moment contains past and future. The secret of transformation, is in the way we handle this very moment.

But true good fortune is what you make for yourself. Good fortune: good character, good intentions, and good actions.

Intelligent investment is more a matter of mental approach than it is of technique. A sound mental approach toward stock fluctuations is the touchstone of all successful investment under present-day conditions.

Men at some time are masters of their fates:The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,But in ourselves, that we are underlings.

I assert once again as a truth to which history as a whole bears witness that men may second their fortune, but cannot oppose it; that they may weave its warp, but cannot break it. Yet they should never give up, because there is always hope, though they know not the end and more towards it along roads which cross one another and as yet are unexplored; and since there is hope, they should not despair, no matter what fortune brings or in what travail they find themselves.

I have had three personal ideals: One to do the day's work well and not to bother about tomorrow. You may say that is not a satisfactory ideal. It is; and there is not one which the student can carry with him into practice with greater effect. To it more than anything else I owe whatever success I have had — to this power of settling down to the day's work and trying to do it well to the best of my ability, and letting the future take care of itself. The second ideal has been to act the Golden Rule, as far as in me lay, toward my professional brethren and toward the patients committed to my care. And the third has been to cultivate such a measure of equanimity as would enable me to bear success with humility, the affection of my friends without pride, and to be ready when the day of sorrow and grief came, to meet it with the courage befitting a man. What the future has in store for me, I cannot tell — you cannot tell. Nor do I care much, so long as I carry with me, as I shall, the memory of the past you have given me. Nothing can take that away.