British writer (1864-1912)
If you are in need of any spiritual thing -- joy, assurance, peace, or whatelse soever -- you can only come into full possession of it by giving an equivalent; you must pay the price for it.
JAMES ALLEN
Byways of Blessedness
A man's sympathy extends just so far as his wisdom reaches, and no further; and a man only grows wiser as he grows tenderer and more compassionate. To narrow one's sympathy is to narrow one's heart, and so to darken and embitter one's life.
JAMES ALLEN
Byways to Blessedness
To desire is to obtain; to aspire is to, achieve. Shall man's basest desires receive the fullest measure of gratification, and his purest aspirations starve for lack of sustenance? Such is not the Law: such a condition of things can never obtain: "ask and receive."
JAMES ALLEN
As a Man Thinketh
As the plant springs from, and could not be without, the seed, so every act of man springs from the hidden seeds of thought, and could not have appeared without them.
JAMES ALLEN
As a Man Thinketh
The man of desire needs the promise of reward to urge him to action. He is as a child working for the possession of a toy.
JAMES ALLEN
Byways of Blessedness
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
As a Man Thinketh
Sympathy is bliss; in it is revealed the highest, purest blessedness. It is divine, for in its reciprocal light all thought of self is lost, and there remains only the pure joy of oneness with others.
JAMES ALLEN
Byways to Blessedness
To sympathise with another is to receive his being into our own, to become one with him, for unselfish love indissolubly unites, and he whose sympathy reaches out to and embraces all humankind and all living creatures has realised his identity and oneness with all, and comprehends the universal Love and Law and Wisdom.
JAMES ALLEN
Byways to Blessedness
Make pure thy heart, and thou wilt make thy life rich, sweet and beautiful.
JAMES ALLEN
Morning and Evening Thoughts
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.
JAMES ALLEN
As a Man Thinketh
Circumstance does not make the man; it reveals him to himself.
JAMES ALLEN
As a Man Thinketh
The universe has no favourites; it is supremely just, and gives to every man his rightful earnings.
JAMES ALLEN
Byways of Blessedness
When a man is rescued from selfish desire his mind is unencumbered, and he is free to work for humanity.
JAMES ALLEN
Byways of Blessedness
Mind is the master-power that moulds and makes.
JAMES ALLEN
Morning and Evening Thoughts
You are the thinker of your thoughts and as such you are the maker of yourself and condition. Thought is causal and creative, and appears in your character and life in the form of results. There are no accidents in your life. Both its harmonies and antagonisms are the responsive chords of your thoughts. A man thinks, and his life appears.
JAMES ALLEN
Above Life's Turmoil
The dreamers are the saviours of the world. As the visible world is sustained by the invisible, so men, through all their trials and sins and sordid vocations, are nourished by the beautiful visions of their solitary dreamers. Humanity cannot forget its dreamers; it cannot let their ideals fade and die; it lives in them; it knows them as the realities which it shall one day see and know.
JAMES ALLEN
As a Man Thinketh
Immortality is here and now, and is not a speculative something beyond the grave. It is a lucid state of consciousness in which the sensations of the body, the varying and unrestful states of mind, and the circumstances and events of life are seen to be of a fleeting and therefore of an illusory character.
JAMES ALLEN
Above Life's Turmoil
Man is made or unmade by himself. By the right choice he ascends. As a being of power, intelligence, and love, and the lord of his own thoughts, he holds the key to every situation.
JAMES ALLEN
As a Man Thinketh
The curtailing of one's desires is the beginning of wisdom; their entire mastery its consumption.
JAMES ALLEN
Byways of Blessedness
As a man purifies his heart, temptation ceases, for when a certain unlawful desire has been taken out of the heart, the object which formerly appealed to it can no longer do so, but becomes dead and powerless, for there is nothing left in the heart that can respond to it.
JAMES ALLEN
Above Life's Turmoil