Quotes by Vernon Howard

The best way to start doing something is to start doing something.

A perfect method for awakening is to examine the results of our daily actions. If they are harmful, we know we need more consciousness.

Procrastination is illogical from every viewpoint. It is like the man who wanted to cross the stream, so he sat on the bank to wait for all the water to run by.

Mysticism is not this or that particular cup on the table; it is the water poured into all of them.

The terrible immoralities are the cunning ones hiding behind masks of morality, such as exploiting people while pretending to help them.

A false path must be tensely and angrily defended by those it has deceived.

You can not escape a prison if you do not know you're in one.

As incredible as it sounds, an unhappy man does not realize that happiness is better than unhappiness. Knowing only his own concealed anguish, he worships it, which is the same as self-worship.

The need to impress others causes half the world's woes.

It is a thousand times more sensible to climb one foot up the
mountainside than to chatter for years about the mountaintop.

We can accept God becoming Man to save Man, but not Man becoming God to save himself.

Society is like a crowd in carnival costumes with everyone fearful that others will see through his disguise.

Run forward when possible, walk ahead when you can, stagger onward when you must, but never cease your forward movement.

Inner guidance is heard like soft music in the night by those who have learned to listen.

Anger or bitterness toward those who have hurt you will block your path to higher ground. You can have anger toward people or you can have freedom from people, but you can't have both.

You must never fear anything at all.

You have it made when you don't care whether you have it made or not.

The power of the present moment is so immense it is capable -- when lived in fully -- of destroying forever every past mistake and regret.

The search for truth is really a lot of good fun.

The miracle of self-healing occurs when the inner patient yields to the inner physician.

Every day that you attempt to see things as they are in truth Is a supremely successful day.

It is a mistake for anyone to think he has lived too long in his old, unsatisfactory ways to make the great change. If you switch on the light in a dark room, it makes no difference how long it was dark because the light will still shine. Be teachable. That is the whole secret.

A cheery relaxation is man's natural state, just as nature itself is relaxed. A waterfall is concerned only with being itself, not with doing something it considers waterfall-like.

The genuinely spiritual person is one who has lost all desire to be anyone but exactly who he is, without labels and without apologies. He is what he is and that's all there's is to it. Such a man is undivided, uncomplicated and contented.

It is against the law to permit weak people to steal your strength. Never permit it.

Ignorant people remain ignorant because they have a secret agreement to call one another intelligent.

The most marvelous experience of life is to transform life according to reality, not imagination.

One false idea is that anyone can hurt you. Events can ruin your reputation, take your money, mistreat you, revenge itself upon you, deceive, betray, abandon you, but cannot hurt you.

Is the beam from a lighthouse affected by howling wind and rain? It remains perfectly steadfast and unaffected by the storm. Your true self is like that. Nothing can ever harm you once you are consciously aware that it is so.

Truth breaks you down so it can rebuild you according to its specifications in Heaven.

Whenever encountering a troublesome person, do not identify him as being cruel or stupid or rude or anything else like that. Instead, see him as a frightened person.

A person obsessed with the need to be happy will never be so. The obsession is the obstruction.

All heartache is caused by wrong viewpoints.

Don't try to be unafraid. That is impossible. Rather, go ahead while being afraid. That is the entire secret for abolishing fear. The Supermind teaches us to have no self-concern at all. Whatever happens to you, act as though it happened to someone else.

A desperation to escape a problem is the wrong way. A passion to understand it is the right way.

Learn this great secret of life: What people call interruption or disturbance to their routine is just as much a part of living as the routine. To split life into two parts, one called routine and the other called interruption, is to be caught between them.

Resistance to the disturbance is the disturbance.

Never fear to deliberately walk through dark places, for that is how you reach the light on the other side.

Do not mistake desire for love. Desire leaves home in a frantic search for one gratification after another. Love is at home with itself.

All we have to do is to receive what we are given...We are given the naturalness to love someone, to be calm in crisis, to ignore self-defeating suggestions, to be pleasant, forgiving, tender, helpful, unworried, brave, energetic.

Always walk through life as if you have something new to learn and you will.

The following terms all mean one and the same thing: God, goodness, mental health, truth, decency, happiness, freedom, reality, peace, love, sensibleness.

When you're young, you don't have much sense. You don't have any reasoning power. You don't have any ability to take a blow, an insult, a hurt in the right way. There is no way a child can do that. All a child can do is feel the pang of it, the heartache of it.

Your friends will be as careless with your life as they are with their own.

We must get to the point in our lives. What is the point? To become a new kind of man or woman, having inner command and outer excellence.

Remember that cosmic fact and mental myth cannot occupy the same place at the same time, any more than two hands can occupy the same glove. So choose what is truly right for you.

Truth never pleads or compromises or wavers. It invites and awaits your acceptance.

Evil wants you to think that its power is absolute, endless. It wants to so make you quake and quiver that all you'll do is fall down and worship it.

Evil is an attack against human spiritual development and enlightenment. All evil, badness, neurosis -- it has one motive and one motive only, which is to destroy -- to destroy your chance of arising above yourself.

It is not the strong who are dangerous to the world and to themselves. It is the weak and the inadequate who threaten -- and sometimes destroy -- mankind's peace and prosperity.

Whatever you want, you have the power to attain it. The man or woman who calmly and matter-of-factly accepts this pronouncement at face value will soon find himself working magical accomplishments far beyond that which he previously dreamed possible.

Make it your profitable habit to carefully study facial expressions. You can see the entire human drama in a face; you can tell its owner's history.

Learn to see a problem from a higher level of understanding. Then, it dissolves before your eyes.

The great solution to all human problems is individual inner transformation.

People appreciate and follow the person who can persuade them properly. Make that person you.

Make it absolutely clear to yourself what you want from other people. That is really half the secret for drawing your desire to you in the shortest possible time and with the least amount of effort.

We are slaves to whatever we don't understand.

We are enslaved by anything we do not consciously see. We are freed by conscious perception.

A clear understanding of negative emotions dismisses them.

Freedom begins as we become conscious of it.

We clearly realize that freedom's inner kingdom cannot be touched by exterior attacks.

Beauty is only skin deep, but it's a valuable asset if you're poor or haven't any sense.

Remember above all that mental stability comes by examining the contents of the mind, not by avoidence.

In order to reach home, where you have the guidance of cosmic insight, you must first depart from your present location. You cannot remain in the noisy city of your own vanities and expect to know what to do. Cosmic knowledge and personal vanity do not mingle.

Can you think of anything more permanently elating than to know that you are on the right road at last?

Quit thinking that you must halt before the barrier of inner negativity. You need not. You can crash through... whatever we see a negative state, that is where we can destroy it.

For every problem or confusion and for every desire or ambition there is an available force waiting for your call.

Humanity appreciates truth about as much as a squirrel appreciates silver.

All forms of self-defeating behavior are unseen and unconscious, which is why their existence is denied.

Learn to see things as they really are, not as we imagine they are.

What you really want for yourself is always trying to break through, just as a cooling breeze flows through an open window on a hot day. Your part is to open the windows of your mind.

We are exactly where we have chosen to be.