of old. The body becomes less gross and heavy, finer in its texture and form, so that it serves far better and responds more readily to the higher impulses of the soul. Matter itself in time responds to the action of these higher forces; and many things that we are accustomed by reason of our limited vision to call miraculous or supernatural become the normal, the natural, the every-day.”
The man who keeps his thoughts and his life tending upward will, in every emergency, find the forces of nature and of his fellow-men rushing to aid him, according to the law," To him that hath, shall be given,” and, because like produces like, the more one has of the success thought, the happiness thought, the good-will thought, the more powerful will be the attraction for kindred things. Thus all good things “shall be added unto him ” and he shall become “perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.”
He Can Who Thinks He Can, and Other Papers on Success in Life
Chapter I. He Can Who Thinks He Can
Chapter III. Education By Absorption
Chapter IV. Freedom At Any Cost
Chapter V. What The World Owes To Dreamers
Chapter VI. The Spirit In Which You Work
Chapter VII. Responsibility Develops Power
Chapter VIII. An Overmastering Purpose
Chapter IX. Has Your Vocation Your Unqualified Approval?
Chapter X. Stand For Something
Chapter XI. Happy, If Not, Why Not?
Chapter XIII. Had Money, But Lost It
Chapter XV. Does The World Owe You A Living?
Chapter XVI. What Has Luck Done For You?
Chapter XVII. Success With A Flaw
Chapter XVIII. Getting Away From Poverty
Chapter I.
He Can Who Thinks He Can
“PROMISED my God I would do it.” In September, 1862, when Lincoln issued his preliminary emancipation proclamation, the sublimest act of the nineteenth century, he made this entry in his diary—“I promised my God I would do it.” Does any one doubt that such a mighty resolution added power to this marvelous man; or that it nerved him to accomplish what he had undertaken? Neither ridicule nor caricature—neither dread of enemies nor desertion of friends,—could shake his indomitable faith in his ability to lead the nation through the greatest struggle in its history.
Napoleon, Bismarck, and all other great achievers had colossal faith in themselves. It doubled, trebled, or even quadrupled the ordinary power of these men. In no other way can we account for the achievements of Luther, Wesley, or Savonarola. Without this sublime faith, this confidence in her mission, how could the simple country maiden, Jeanne d’Arc, have led and controlled the French army? This divine self-confidence multiplied her power a thousandfold, until even the king obeyed her, and she led his stalwart troops as if they were children.
After William Pitt was dismissed from office, he said to the Duke of Devonshire, “I am sure I can save this country, and that nobody else can.” “For eleven weeks,” says Bancroft, “England was without a minister. At length the king and aristocracy recognized Pitt’s ascendency, and yielded to him the reins.”
It was his unbounded confidence in his ability that compelled the recognition and led to the supremacy in England of Benjamin Disraeli, the once despised Jew. He did not quail or lose heart when the hisses and jeers of the British parliament rang in his ears. He sat down amid the jeering members, saying, “You will yet hear me.” He felt within him then the confidence of power that made him prime minister of England, and turned sneers and hisses into admiration and applause.
Much of President Roosevelt’s success has been due to his colossal self-confidence. He believes in Roosevelt, as Napoleon believed in Napoleon. There is nothing timid or halfhearted about our great president He goes at everything with that gigantic assurance, with that tremendous confidence, which half wins the battle before he begins. It is astonishing how the world makes way for a resolute soul, and how obstacles get out of the path of a determined man who believes in himself. There is no philosophy by which a man can do a thing when he thinks he can’t. What can defeat a strong man who believes in himself and cannot be ridiculed down, talked down, or written down? Poverty cannot dishearten him, misfortune deter him, or hardship turn him a hair’s breadth from his course. Whatever comes, he keeps his eye on the goal and pushes ahead.
What would you think of a young man, ambitious to become a lawyer, who should surround himself with a medical atmosphere and spend his time reading medical books? Do you think he would ever become a great lawyer by following such a course? No, he must put himself in a law atmosphere; go where he can absorb it and be steeped in it until he is attuned to the legal note. He must be so grafted upon the legal tree that he can feel its sap circulating through him.
How long will it take a young man to become successful who puts himself in an atmosphere of failure and remains in it until he is soaked, saturated, with the idea? How long will it take a man who depreciates himself, talks failure, thinks failure, walks like a failure and dresses like a failure; who is always complaining of the insurmountable difficulties in his way, and whose every step is on the road to failure—how long will it take him to arrive at the success goal? Will anyone believe in him or expect him to win?
The majority of failures
