Do you desire success in life? Will you take the means that infallibly secure it? Will you choose, and say to yourself: “I will have wealth; I will have fame; I will have virtue; I will have power’. ? Let your imagination play upon the thought, and watch the dim clouds of hope shape themselves into heavenly possibilities. Give wings to your fancy, for fairer than any picture that you can paint with thought is the future that you can claim with will. Once you have imagined, once you have chosen, say: “I will”. And there is nothing on earth that can hinder you for long; for you are immortal and the future is obedient to you.

You say that death may stand in your way? It will not. You say that poverty and sickness and friends may stand in your way ? They certainly will not. Nothing can, unless you permit it, or even make it so. But you must choose, and never again must you wish for anything. But you must say: “I will”. And you must say it always in thought and in deed, not only now in word. And henceforth never for a moment must your purpose change, but your constant intention must turn everything you touch into line with it. Then, if that which you have chosen is not harmful, it will be yours before long.

You speak of the littleness of man, lost in the wrinkles of giant mother earth, herself as a speck of dust in the infinitudes of space! It is not so, for the great things are not measured by size. You talk of weakness and fatigue, of the immediate follies and pleasures and proprieties and accidents of life — how these confine and limit little man. It is not so, for all can be turned to use. The body is only a garment and the senses but peep-holes in the veil of flesh, and when these are quiet and that is obedient, and the mind dwells in contemplation of your immortal possibilities, a window opens within you, and through it you see and know that you shall be what you will to be, and nothing else.

As the tiny seed, buried in the ground, bursts and puts forth a tender shoot, which pushes its way through the soil and wins its freedom in the upper air, and presently there is a mighty oak, peopling the earth with portions of itself, or, as a great banyan spreads without limit from a little root, providing wealth and home for myriads of creatures; so put ye forth this day the first tender but not uncertain shoot of will, and choose what you will be.

What will you choose? Will you have power? Then let others be freer and more powerful because you are so. Will you have knowledge? Then let others be wiser because you are so. Will you have love? Then let others enjoy it because you have much to give. Thus will your will be in accord with that first and universal principle of being which becomes increasingly known to each of us, and instils in time the prime lesson of that unshrinking sympathy which will ultimately make all strength our strength and all life our life.

What will be your means? Everything that you meet, small and great; for there is nothing that you cannot use as a means to your end. But once more, let all the persons and the things that you use be benefited by the use. Thus your success will be theirs also, and the first principle will be fulfilled.

imagination, knowledge, littleness of man, success in life