Whenever you appreciate a certain thing you become conscious of its real quality, and whenever you become conscious of the quality of anything, you begin to develop that quality in yourself. When we appreciate the worth of a person, we tend to impress the idea of that worth in our own minds, and thereby cause the same effect to be produced, in a measure, in ourselves.

Use the imagination to picture only what is good, what is beautiful, what is beneficial, what is ideal, and what you wish to realize. Mentally see yourself receiving what you deeply desire to receive. What you imagine, you will think, and what you think, you will become. Therefore, if you imagine only those things that are in harmony with what you wish to obtain or achieve, all your thinking will soon tend to produce what you want to attain or achieve.

The pessimist waits for better times, and expects to keep on waiting; the optimist goes to work with the best that is at hand now, and proceeds to create better times.

Never try to compel others to change; leave them free to change naturally and orderly because they want to; and they will want to when they find that your change was worthwhile. To inspire in others a desire to chance for the better is truly noble; but this you can do only by leaving them alone, and becoming more noble yourself.

Whenever you permit yourself to think what persons, things, conditions, or circumstances may suggest, you are not following what you want to think. You are not following your own desires but borrowed desires. Use your imagination in determining what you want to think or do.

What we love in others we not only awaken in others, but we develop those very things more or less in ourselves.

Happiness, however, is not the result of any one single cause. It is the result of many ideal states of being grouped together into one harmonious whole.