THE THOUGHT OF SUCCESS

But to emerge successfully from all these difficulties, one must believe that one can do it, banishing absolutely from one’s mind the doubt, that, like leprosy, attacks the most well-made resolutions, transforming them into hurtful indecision.

The mere thought, “I will succeed,” is in itself a condition of success.  The man who pronounces these words with absolute belief implies this sentence:  “I will succeed because I will succeed and because I am determined to employ every legitimate means to that end!”

Avoid also all grieving or melancholy over past failures, or, if you must be occupied with them, let it be without mingling bitterness with your regrets.

Say to yourself:  “It is true.  I failed in that undertaking.  But from this moment I propose to think of it merely to remind myself of the reasons why I failed.

“I wish to analyze them sincerely, while recognizing where I was in the wrong, so that under similar circumstances I can avoid the repetition of the same mistakes.”

Fools and knaves are the only people who complain of fate.

The words “I have no luck” should be erased altogether from the vocabulary of the man who proposes to acquire poise.

It is the excuse in which weaklings and cowards indulge.

Timid people are always complaining of the injustice of fate, without stopping to think that they have themselves been the direct causes of their own failures.

The violet has often been quoted—­and very improperly—­as an example of shrinking modesty which it would be well to imitate.

It does not in the least trouble the phrase-makers and the followers of the ideas that they have spread broadcast through the world that the violet which hides timidly behind its sheltering leaves nearly always dies unnoticed, and that it is in most cases anemic and faded in color.  The type that wins the admiration of the world is that, which, disengaging itself from its leafy shield, springs up with a bound above its green foliage just as men of poise rise triumphantly above the accidents and the petty details which bury the timid under their heavy fronds.

If one were minded to carry out the comparison properly, it is far more exact to liken the timid to these degenerate flowers, which are indebted to the shade in which they hide for their puny and abortive appearance.

The timid have then no sort of excuse for complaining of their ill-luck.

To begin with, it is to their own defects solely that their obscurity is due.

Furthermore, by ceaselessly complaining, they gradually become absorbed by these ideas of ill-fortune, which grow to be their accomplices in their detestation of effort and suggest to them the thought of attempting nothing upon the absurd pretext that nothing they do can succeed.

One must add here—­and this is extremely important—­that in acting in this way they always manage to provoke the hostile forces that are dormant in everything and that array themselves the more readily against such people because of their lack of the resolution to combat them and the energy to overcome them.