Let there be nothing within thee that is not very beautiful and very gentle, and there will be nothing without thee that is not beautiful and softened by the spell of thy presence.
Interpretation
Embrace inner beauty and gentleness to reflect it in the world around you.
This quote emphasizes the importance of cultivating inner qualities such as beauty and gentleness. According to James Allen, when these virtues are present within a person, they will naturally project them into their external environment, thus creating a more beautiful and harmonious world influenced by their positive presence.
In practice
In a speech about personal growth, one could use this quote to inspire others to focus on their inner qualities.
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.
You are always in the process of creating. Every moment, every minute, every day. You are a big creation machine and you are turning out a new manifestation literally as fast as you can think.
It is an hypothesis that the sun will rise tomorrow: and this means that we do not know whether it will rise.
Magic is a state of mind. It is often portrayed as very black and gothic, and that is because certain practitioners played that up for a sense of power and prestige. That is a disservice. Magic is very colorful. Of this, I am sure.
The old assumption of the approximate impossibility of war really rested on a similar assumption about the impossibility of evil-and especially of evil in high places.
My hope is to create spaces where people of all stripes can come together and speak at a lower decibel level. We make more sense that way. We sound more like our real selves that way.
War is too serious a matter to entrust to military men.
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