“A man's mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild; but whether cultivated or neglected, it must, and will, bring forth. If no useful seeds are put into it, then an abundance of useless weed seeds will fall therein, and will continue to produce their kind.”

“Your circumstances may be uncongenial, but they shall not long remain so if you but perceive an Ideal and strive to reach it.”

“Man's mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild.”

“A particular train of thought persisted in, be it good or bad, cannot fail to produce its results on the character and circumstances. A man cannot directly choose his circumstances, but he can choose his thoughts, and so indirectly, yet surely, shape his circumstances.”

“As he thinks, so he is; as he continues to think, so he remains.”

“The one prudence in life is concentration; the one evil is dissipation: and it makes no difference whether our dissipations are coarse or fine; property and its cares, friends and a social habit, or politics, or music, or feasting. Everything is good which takes away one plaything and delusion more, and drives us home to add one stroke of faithful work.”

“Concentration is the secret of srength.”

“How much more the seeker of abstract truth, who needs periods of isolation, and rapt concentration, and almost a going out of thebody to think!”