Vernon Howard Quotes

The miracle of self-healing occurs when the inner patient yields to the inner physician.

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.

Change is never a loss - it is change only.

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.

The Truth must be told at all costs, no matter how unpopular it may be. The authentic spiritual leader, having freed himself of his own false need to be popular, tells the Truth whether it falls on fertile or stony ground. Such a teacher is the salt of the earth, though few know it. If you think the world is delirious as is, you would find it intolerable without his healing influence.

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.

Happiness is not the acquisition of anything; it's the understanding of something.

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

Society is like a crowd in carnival costumes with everyone fearful that others will see through his disguise.

As incredible as it sounds, an unhappy man does not realize that happiness is better than unhappiness. Knowing only his own concealed anguish, he worships it, which is the same as self-worship.

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

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

One false idea is that anyone can hurt you. Events can ruin your reputation, take your money, mistreat you, revenge itself upon you, deceive, betray, abandon you, but cannot hurt you.

One of society's absurd delusions is that the spending of money can cure something.

Do not be impatient with your seemingly slow progress. Do not try to run faster than you presently can. If you are studying, reflecting and trying, you are making progress whether you are aware of it or not. A traveler walking the road in the darkness of night is still going forward. Someday, some way, everything will break open, like the natural unfolding of a rosebud.

Just as surely as distress must follow self-deceit, healing must follow self-honesty.

Run forward when possible, walk ahead when you can, stagger onward when you must, but never cease your forward movement.

Mysticism is not this or that particular cup on the table; it is the water poured into all of them.

Just be honest with yourself. That opens the door.

Instead of fighting your problems, picture your way out of them.

We are exactly where we have chosen to be.

Men have the illusion of having a duty to make the world spin properly, which is precisely what makes it wobble.

All we have to do is to receive what we are given...We are given the naturalness to love someone, to be calm in crisis, to ignore self-defeating suggestions, to be pleasant, forgiving, tender, helpful, unworried, brave, energetic.

A chief cause of unhappiness is what I call mental movies. Mental movies are a misuse of the imagination. You know how it goes. You have a painful experience with someone, then run it over and over in your mind. You visualize what you said, what he did, how you both felt. As awful as it is, you feel compelled to repeat the film day and night. It is as if you were locked inside a theatre playing a horrible movie.

When you are genuinely strong, you neither attack nor defend and so retain your energy.

Persistence prevails, like a stream that is temporarily blocked by boulders and then collects force enough to overflow onward.

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

Self-knowledge is the great power by which we comprehend and control our lives

If heaven existed as a physical building on earth, human beings would remodel it to make it right.

Interpretation blocks reception while masquerading as reception. Rightness does not need interpretation; it requires simple acceptance and nothing else.

Truth is not a matter of personal viewpoint.

You need only choose ... then keep choosing as many times as necessary. That is all you need do. And it is certainly something you can do. Then as you continue to choose, everything is yours.

Self awakening enables you to see the human scene as it is, not as it appears to be, which frees you of its chaos.

Aloneness is a wise teacher. Kierkegaard remarked that one sign of spiritual maturity was the ability to be comfortable when alone.

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.

We can become slaves to things we don't understand

Healing fails to occur because it is much easier to injure another than to heal oneself.

A person obsessed with the need to be happy will never be so. The obsession is the obstruction.

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

A desperation to escape a problem is the wrong way. A passion to understand it is the right way

Truth breaks you down so it can rebuild you according to its specifications in Heaven.

Anger or bitterness toward those who have hurt you will block your path to higher ground. You can have anger toward people or you can have freedom from people, but you can't have both.

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

If you call one thing good, you must call its opposite bad. If you think it wonderful to make a big profit in your business, you will also think it terrible if you incur a large loss. The idea is to live above the opposites.

We are slaves to whatever we don't understand.

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.

How would you feel if you had no fear? Feel like that. How would you behave toward other people if you realized their powerlessness to hurt you? Behave like that. How would your react to so-called misfortune if you saw its inability to bother you? React like that. How would you think toward yourself if you knew you were really all right? Think like that.

No one can tell you what is right for you except yourself. So start telling yourself what to do. If you blunder for ten years while thinking for yourself, that is rich treasure when compared with living these ten years under the mental domination of another.