Words I Have Lived By

Peale, Norman Vincent

Verlag: The C.R. Gibson Company, Norwalk, Connecticut, 1991

Beschreibung

As new condition elaborately decorated color illustrated boards with gold front cover and spine lettering. Includes Introduction by Norman Vincent Peale. Illustrated with repeating color decoration at the beginning of each chapter, a marbled decoration illustrating the outer margins of many pages, and two-color front and rear endpaper illustrations. Chapter titles are as follows: Daily Life and Work; Enthusiasm and Perseverance; God's Creation; Faith; Prayer; Relationships; Self; Physical Health; Mental Health; Pain and Suffering; Healing; Community; Love and Family; Aging; and Death and Beyond. "Winston Churchill once said, "It is a good thing to read books of quotations. The quotations when engraved upon the memory give you good thoughts." And to have "good thoughts" is important, for a person becomes what he thinks. Gautama Buddha told us that. "Mind is everything," he said. "We become what we think." Charles Edision, one-time governor of New Jersey and son of the famous inventor Thomas A. Edision, was a personal friend of mine; I was with him many times. He loved to talk about his father and told me many stories about him. It seems that the older Edision thought that the mind is our greatest asset and would often say to his son, "The primary function of the body is to carry the brain." That is not a direct quotation, being simply a remark in conversation, but it may be taken to represent the inventor's thinking. The brain, besides directing motor activity, is, of course, the instrument by which one remembers, considers, evaluates, thinks. And it is through the wonders of the brain that one knows God, the Creator of it all. William James, sometimes called the father of American psychological science, expressed agreement with these ideas and went even further : "The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind." Professor James' generation lived in what may be called an age of discovery. During that era some of the most notable discoveries of science took place. But the surpreme discovery is that we can change our lives by the changing of mental attitudes. That being true -- and that it is true is a generally accepted fact today -- then anything that can contribute to a thought process that changes our basic attitudes is of value. I have found over many years that the habit of dropping choice thoughts into consciousness and allowing them to permeate the mental structure results finally in a thought pattern that affects virtually the totality of one's life. The quotation just cited from William James, for example, was dropped into my thoughts one day long ago as I sat in class at Boston University. It was as if I had been hit by a bolt of lightning. It struck me so forcibly that it vitally affected my total thinking. The truth of it seemed certain. I believed it; I accepted it. From my background, I associated personal change with faith and, in a flash of insight, knew that I could change my life by changing my attitudes of mind. I've been advocating that truth about people ever since. So the object of this book of quotations is to bring to readers the thoughts I have picked up in a lifetime of reading, as well as others heard in conversation with all sorts of people. All wisdom is not in the past. But, when working with quotations, an old saying often comes to mind: "There is nothing new under the sun." Often today's speakers, writers, and conversationalists may come up with a new formulation of an ancient truth that is fascinating, even exciting. We may expect that these truths may continue to be quoted 100 years from now, perhaps modernized to fit the late twenty-first century. I have had a lot of pleasure in gathering together these favorite quotations. Incidents in which the quotations have been meaningful to me have come to mind as I collected them for this book." - excerpt from the Introduction by Norman Vincent Peale. Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 006861

Bibliografische Details

Titel: Words I Have Lived By

Verlag: The C.R. Gibson Company, Norwalk, Connecticut

Erscheinungsdatum: 1991

Einband: Hardcover

Illustrator: Pantelone, Robert J. (book design)

Zustand: As New