If you would protect your body, guard your mind.  If you would renew your body, beautify your mind.  Thoughts of malice, envy, disappointment, despondency, rob the body of its health and grace.  A sour face does not come by chance; it is made by sour thoughts.  Wrinkles that mar are drawn by folly, passion, and pride.

I know a woman of ninety-six who has the bright, innocent face of a girl.  I know a man well under middle age whose face is drawn into inharmonious contours.  The one is the result of a sweet and sunny disposition; the other is the outcome of passion and discontent.

As you cannot have a sweet and wholesome abode unless you admit the air and sunshine freely into your rooms, so a strong body and a bright, happy, or serene countenance can only result from the free admittance into the mind of thoughts of joy and goodwill and serenity.

On the faces of the aged there are wrinkles made by sympathy, others by strong and pure thought, and others are carved by passion:  who cannot distinguish them?  With those who have lived righteously, age is calm, peaceful, and softly mellowed, like the setting sun.  I have recently seen a philosopher on his deathbed.  He was not old except in years.  He died as sweetly and peacefully as he had lived.

There is no physician like cheerful thought for dissipating the ills of the body; there is no comforter to compare with goodwill for dispersing the shadows of grief and sorrow.  To live continually in thoughts of ill will, cynicism, suspicion, and envy, is to be confined in a self made prison-hole.  But to think well of all, to be cheerful with all, to patiently learn to find the good in all—­such unselfish thoughts are the very portals of heaven; and to dwell day by day in thoughts of peace toward every creature will bring abounding peace to their possessor.

THOUGHT AND PURPOSE

UNTIL thought is linked with purpose there is no intelligent accomplishment.  With the majority the bark of thought is allowed to “drift” upon the ocean of life.  Aimlessness is a vice, and such drifting must not continue for him who would steer clear of catastrophe and destruction.

They who have no central purpose in their life fall an easy prey to petty worries, fears, troubles, and self-pityings, all of which are indications of weakness, which lead, just as surely as deliberately planned sins (though by a different route), to failure, unhappiness, and loss, for weakness cannot persist in a power evolving universe.

A man should conceive of a legitimate purpose in his heart, and set out to accomplish it.  He should make this purpose the centralizing point of his thoughts.  It may take the form of a spiritual ideal, or it may be a worldly object, according to his nature at the time being; but whichever it is, he should steadily focus his thought-forces upon the object, which he has set before him.  He should make this purpose