As a Man Thinketh
1903
The title comes from Proverbs 23:7, and James Allen's 1903 masterwork builds a single, radical idea: we become what we think. Not what we do, or what happens to us, but what we dwell upon in the silent chambers of mind. Your circumstances, he argues, are not random cruelty or blind fortune - they are the physical footprint of your inner life, the inevitable harvest of seeds you planted in thought. This is not positive thinking as modern self-help has cheapened it. Allen writes with Victorian moral seriousness about purity of mind, about the responsibility that comes with recognizing we are the sculptors of our own souls. The prose has the quality of scripture - brief, declarative, meant to be absorbed slowly, one aphorism at a time, like water wearing stone. A hundred pages on how thought becomes character, becomes circumstance, becomes destiny. Read it in an afternoon. Live with it for years.
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“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.””
— James Allen
“Self-control is strength. Right thought is mastery. Calmness is power. ””
— James Allen
“A strong man cannot help a weaker unless the weaker is willing to be helped, and even then the weak man must become strong of himself; he must, by his own efforts, develop the strength which he admires in another. None but himself can alter his condition.””
— James Allen
“The outer conditions of a person's life will always be found to be harmoniously related to his inner state...Men do not attract that which they want, but that which they are.””
— James Allen
“As he thinks, so he is; as he continues to think, so he remains.””
— James Allen
“A man is literally what he thinks, his character being the complete sum of all his thoughts.””
— James Allen
“A person is limited only by the thoughts that he chooses.””
— James Allen
“A man only begins to be a man when he ceases to whine and revile, and commences to search for the hidden justice which regulates his life. And he adapts his mind to that regulating factor, he ceases to accuse others as the cause of his 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 the hidden powers and possibilities within himself.””
— James Allen
“Cherish your visions.Cherish your ideals.Cherish the music that stirs in your heart, the beauty that forms in your mind, the loveliness that drapes your purest thoughts.For out of them will grow all delightful conditions, all heavenly environment, of these, if you but remain true to them, your world will at last be built.””
— James Allen
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Allen, James. As a Man Thinketh. Lex, lex-books.com/book/as-a-man-thinketh-a7d4de0c-0b87-47c3-97bb-872813d8eaae.Allen, J. (1903). As a Man Thinketh. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/as-a-man-thinketh-a7d4de0c-0b87-47c3-97bb-872813d8eaaeAllen, James. As a Man Thinketh. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/as-a-man-thinketh-a7d4de0c-0b87-47c3-97bb-872813d8eaae.
