James Allen was a British philosopher and a pioneer of the self-help movement. His best known work, As a Man Thinketh.

28 November 1864 – 24 January 1912.

“Your circumstances may be uncongenial, but they shall not remain so if you perceive an ideal and strive to reach it. You cannot travel within and stand still without.” 

“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 therin, and will continue to produce their kind.”

“All that a man achieves and all that he fails to achieve is the direct result of his own thoughts.”

“Having conceived of his purpose, a man should mentally mark out a straight pathway to its achievement, looking neither to the right or to the left, but straight.”

“Act is the blossom of thought; and joy and suffering are its fruits; thus does a man garner in the sweet and bitter fruitage of his own husbandry.”

“A man only beings to be a man when he ceases to whine and revile, and commences to search for the hidden justice which regulates his life. And as he adapts his mind to that regulating factor, he ceases to accuse others as the cause of this condition, and builds himself up in strong and noble thoughts; ceases to kick against circumstances but begins to use them as aids to his more rapid progress, and as a means of discovering the hidden powers and possibilities within himself.”

“Man is made or unmade by himself; in the armoury 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.”

“A man cannot directly choose his circumstances, but he can choose his thoughts, and so indirectly, yet surely, shape his circumstances

“Let a man radically alter his thoughts and he will be astonished at the rapid transformation it will effect in the material conditions of his life.”

“You are today where you thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you.”

“Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so you shall become. Your vision is the promise of what you shall one day be; your ideal is the prophecy of what you shall at last unveil.”

“Men are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves; they therefore remain bound.”