The greatest achievement was at first and for a time a dream. The oak sleeps in the acorn, the bird waits in the egg, and in the highest vision of the soul a waking angel stirs. Dreams are the seedlings of realities.
Interpretation
Achievements start as dreams or visions that require nurturing to become reality.
This quote by James Allen emphasizes that all great achievements begin as dreams, much like the potential within an acorn or an egg. It illustrates the idea that dreams need to be nurtured and cultivated, as they are the initial seeds that can grow into tangible realities, awakening the potential within us.
In practice
In a motivational speech about pursuing ambitions.
A man becomes calm in the measure that he understands himself as a thought-evolved being. For such knowledge necessitates the understanding of others as the result of thought, and as he develops a right understanding, and sees ever more clearly the internal relations of things by the action of cause and effect, he ceases to fuss, fume, worry, and grieve. He remains poised, steadfast, serene.
The body is the servant of the mind. It obeys the operations of the mind, whether they be deliberately chosen or automatically expressed.
Work joyfully and peacefully, knowing that right thoughts and right efforts inevitably bring about right results.
Man is made or unmade by himself. In the armory of thought he forges the weapons by which he destroys himself. He also fashions the tools with which he builds for himself heavenly mansions of joy and strength and peace.
They who have conquered doubt and fear have conquered failure.
Good thoughts and actions can never produce bad results; bad thoughts and actions can never produce good results … We understand this law in the natural world, and work with it; but few understand it in the mental and moral world—although its operation there is just as simple and undeviating— and they, therefore, do not cooperate with it.
Knowledge will not attract money, unless it is organized, and intelligently directed, through practical plans of action, to the definite end of accumulation of money.
Great industries are never made from single companies. There is room in space for a lot of winners.
If the company depends entirely on you - your creativity, ingenuity, inspiration, salesmanship or charisma - nobody will want to buy it. The risk and the dependency are too great.
You need three things to become a successful novelist: talent, luck and discipline. Discipline is the one element of those three things that you can control, and so that is the one that you have to focus on controlling, and you just have to hope and trust in the other two.
When I came to New York, I told everyone I was a writer/director, and they said, 'No.' There was a rule. You could be one or the other. They ordained me writer. But then I won the Obie for directing 'Spunk,' and the rules changed.
The secret of success is that it is not the absence of failure, but the absence of envy.
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