As a Man Thinketh by James Allen

Mind is the Master power that moulds and makes,

And Man is Mind and everyone he takes

The tool of Thought, and, shaping what he wills,

Brings forth a thousand joys, a thousand ills:

He thinks in secret, and it comes to pass:

Environment is but his looking-glass.

* (Side note) Since the book was written on a period when women were not truly able to exercise their intellectual powers, the author speaks to men. Yet this book is just as much for women, as it is for men.

As a Man Thinketh is a philosophical, new age book published in 1903. It delves on the concept of thought as the power tool for shaping one's life. Small and easy to read, its pages are full of wisdom. The author, James Allen was born into a working-class family in Leicester, UK. Following his father's death, at the age of fifteen, the son left school to provide for his family. Later on, he married his wife Louisa and started writing various articles regarding spirituality. He published his own journal named ''The Light of Reason'' where he wrote and published his own work. After his death, his wife, renamed his journal into The Epoch, and referring to her husband's work she said, ''He never wrote theories, or for the sake of writing; but he wrote when he had a message, and it became a message only when he had lived it out in his own life, and knew that it was good. Thus he wrote facts, which he had proven by practice.'' Having introduced the man behind the work, it's now time to showcase his words.

As the plant springs from, and could not be without, the seed, so every act of a man springs from the hidden seeds of thought, and could not have appeared without them, This applies equally to those acts called ''spontaneous'' and ''unpremeditated'' as to those, which are deliberately executed. 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.

Every man is where he is by the law of his being; the thoughts which he has built into his character have brought him there, and in the arrangement of his life there is no element of chance, but all is a result of a law which cannot err. This is just as true of those who feel ''out of harmony'' with their surroundings as of those who are contented with them''.

Circumstance does not make the man; it reveals him to himself. No such conditions can exist as descending into vice and its attendant sufferings apart from vicious inclinations, or ascending into virtue and its pure happiness without the continued cultivation of virtuous aspirations.

Good thoughts and actions can never produce bad results; bad thoughts and actions can never produce good results. This is but saying that nothing can come from corn but corn, nothing from nettles but nettles. Men understand this law in the natural world, and work with it; but few understand it in the mental and moral world.

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 walking angel stirs. Dream are but seedlings of realities.

In all human affairs there are efforts, and there are results, and the strength of the effort is the measure of the result. Chance is not. Gifts, powers, material, intellectual, and spiritual possessions are the fruits of effort; they are thoughts completed, objects accomplished, visions realized.

The Vision that you glorify in your mind, the Ideal that you enthrone in your heart- this you will build your life by, this you will become.

* Painting by Alex the Beck/ Source: Pinterest.