Your ability to use the principle of autosuggestion will depend, very largely, upon your capacity to concentrate upon a given desire until that desire becomes a burning obsession.

Recommended reading: Think and Grow Rich.

When you recognize that pain — and response to pain — is a universal thing, it helps explain so many things about others, just as it explains so much about yourself. It teaches you forbearance. It teaches you a moderation in your responses to other people’s behavior. It teaches you a sort of understanding. It essentially tells you what everybody needs. You know what everybody needs? You want to put it in a single word? Everybody needs to be understood. And out of that comes every form of love. If someone truly feels that you understand them, an awful lot of neurotic behavior just disappears — disappears on your part, disappears on their part. So if you’re talking about what motivates this world to continue existing as a community, you’ve got to talk about love… And my argument is it comes out of your biology because on some level we understand all of this. We put it into religious forms. It’s almost like an excuse to deny our biology. We put it into pithy, sententious aphorisms, but it’s really coming out of our deepest physiological nature.

Recommended reading: Lost in America: A Journey with My Father.

There are two kinds of people, those who do the work and those who take the credit. Try to be in the first group; there is less competition there.

Recommended reading: Indira Gandhi: Daughter of India.

All endings are also beginnings. We just don’t know it at the time.

Recommended reading: For One More Day.

You live and learn. At any rate, you live.

Recommended reading: The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

The important thing is to strive towards a goal which is not immediately visible. That goal is not the concern of the mind, but of the spirit.

Recommended reading: The Little Prince.

No experience is a cause of success or failure. We do not suffer from the shock of our experiences, so-called trauma – but we make out of them just what suits our purposes.

Recommended reading: Understanding Human Nature: The Psychology of Personality.

You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.

Recommended reading: How to Win Friends & Influence People.

Lost love is still love. It takes a different form, that’s all. You can’t see their smile or bring them food or tousle their hair or move them around a dance floor. But when those senses weaken another heightens. Memory. Memory becomes your partner. You nurture it. You hold it. You dance with it.

Recommended reading: Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life’s Greatest Lesson.

Flatter me, and I may not believe you. Criticize me, and I may not like you. Ignore me, and I may not forgive you. Encourage me, and I will not forget you. Love me and I may be forced to love you.

Recommended reading: Thoughts of a Christian Optimist.