hey are, but what they seem; this
explains the contradictory evidence of persons speaking in all good
faith.

***

By believing oneself to be the master of one's thoughts one becomes
so.

***

Everyone of our thoughts, good or bad, becomes concrete,
materializes, and becomes in short a reality.

We are what we make ourselves and not what circumstances make
us.

***

Whoever starts off in life with the idea: "I shall succeed", always
does succeed because he does what is necessary to bring about this
result. If only one opportunity presents itself to him, and if this
opportunity has, as it were, only one hair on its head, he seizes it by
that one hair. Further, he often brings about unconsciously or not,
propitious circumstances.

He who on the contrary always doubts himself, never succeeds in
doing anything. He might find himself in the midst of an army of
opportunities with heads of hair like Absalom, and yet he would not
see them and could not seize a single one, even if he had only to
stretch out his hand in order to do so. And if he brings about
circumstances, they are generally unfavorable ones. Do not then
blame fate, you have only yourself to blame.

***

People are always preaching the doctrine of effort, but this idea must
be repudiated. Effort means will, and will means the possible
entrance of the imagination in opposition, and the bringing about of
the exactly contrary result to the desired one.

***

Always think that what you have to do is easy, if possible. In this
state of mind you will not spend more of your strength than just
what is necessary; if you consider it difficult, you will spend ten,
twenty times more strength than you need; in other words you will
waste it.

***

Autosuggestion is an instrument which you have to learn how to use
just as you would for any other instrument. An excellent gun in
inexperienced hands only gives wretched results, but the more
skilled the same hands become, the more easily they place the
bullets in the target.

***

Conscious autosuggestion, made with confidence, with faith, with
perseverance, realizes itself mathematically, within reason.

***

When certain people do not obtain satisfactory results with
autosuggestion, it is either because they lack confidence, or because
they make efforts, which is the more frequent case. To make good
suggestions it is absolutely necessary to do it _without effort._ The
latter implies the use of the _