Vernon Howard Quotes

You have succeeded in life when all you really WANT is only what you really NEED.

A truly strong person does not need the approval of others any more than a lion needs the approval of sheep.

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

By cultivating the beautiful we scatter the seeds of heavenly flowers, as by doing good we cultivate those that belong to humanity.

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

Just be honest with yourself. That opens the door.

Do not be impatient with your seemingly slow progress. Do not try to run faster than you presently can. If you are studying, reflecting and trying, you are making progress whether you are aware of it or not. A traveler walking the road in the darkness of night is still going forward. Someday, some way, everything will break open, like the natural unfolding of a rosebud.

We are exactly where we have chosen to be.

When told that man lives in delusion everyone thinks of himself as the exception; hence his delusion.

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 clear understanding of negative emotions dismisses them.

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

Self-knowledge is the great power by which we comprehend and control our lives

Human sickness is so severe that few can bear to look at it...but those who do will become well.

Don’t try to be spiritual. That is only a word in the dictionary. Make it your goal to become a normally functioning individual. Let these principles shape you according to your real nature of a simple, decent, honest, unafraid human being.

The true way of knowing yourself includes neither self-praise nor self-blame, but only a wise silence.

Don’t think that you must involve yourself with complex intellectual philosophies. Don’t try to be profound or educated. That only wears you out. Just be simple. Let everyday life be your teacher.

The truth , when it arrives is always different from what we thought it would be..if we imagine that we already know the truth, that imaginations based on old and habitual ideas. But the truth is always something entirely new to the mind; so we cannot possibly imagine it. Just as we cannot know what a new day is like before we experience it, we cannot think accurately about a new truth until we first live it. As we dare to drop our conditioned opinions, we make room for the truth...

Doing good to someone in order to reduce self-guilt will only ruin things for both of you.

Aloneness is a wise teacher. Kierkegaard remarked that one sign of spiritual maturity was the ability to be comfortable when alone.

Circumstances are conquered simply by having no egotistical need to conquer them.

You command a condition by having no negative attitudes toward it.

Try to see that a thought about a person or event is merely a thought about that person or event. It is the thought about them that makes you feel the way you do. To change the way you feel, change the way you think. ​— ​Vernon Howard, The Power of Your Supermind

A self-working individual will be sitting around home one day when the startling thought occurs, “Here I am, sitting around, doing nothing of interest, nothing to hope for, no one to talk with-and I am not depressed.

A person radiates what he really is, not what he imagines he is, and attracts what he radiates.

Just as darkness cannot put out a candle, evil has no real power over goodness.

There is great wisdom in asking, "How can I get out of this?" There is even greater wisdom in asking, "How did I get INTO this?

Inner liberation can be described as a condition in which you no longer take either credit or blame for anything.

Your unhappiness consists of what you cannot be told about yourself.

Your level of mental awareness attracts the habitual life you lead.

Regrets at losing social or financial opportunities are both delusion and needless pain.

Rushing emotions have no more real power to sweep you away than a tiny brook can move a boulder.

A truly strong person does not need the approval of others any more than a lion needs the approval of sheep." My old neighbors...so glad to be free from that negativity.

A positive virtue—the real thing—is not something that you do. It is something that you are. A genuinely kindly person and his kindness are a single unit; they are one. A really gentle person cannot help acting with kindness any more than a cruel person can help but act with cruelty. Do not be afraid to face the existence of negative attitudes and emotions within you. Simply see that they are there. Remember, they are not the real you; they are acquired negativities. Once you really see this you will go to work on yourself in a new way.

To return to the basic idea, you must see that there is a difference between your True Self and your False Self. The True Self is the essential you. It is pure, unconditioned, natural, spiritual. It has nothing to do with ego-competition, pretense, self-deception, pride, vanity, arrogance, and other negativities that keep a man afraid. All such items belong to the False Self.

What a dawning appears to the man or woman who earnestly inquires, 'Who is living my life for me?' Am I really thinking for myself or am I unknowingly projecting acquired ideas which may be all wrong?

The following brief points are like magic moccasins. They guarantee safe guidance through the forest of people. To walk safely, wear them! 1. The most persuasive power you have toward others is a mature self. 2. The mark of greatness is to be superior without feeling superior. 3. "The consciousness of being loved softens the keenest pang." (Joseph Addison) 4. The turning point in all your exterior relations comes when you start changing your inner self. 5. Strong people attract the weak. 6. Possessiveness and dependency are not states of love. 7. Your own level of being attracts the kind of people who enter your life. 8. "He is happy as well as great who needs neither to obey nor command in order to be something." (Goethe) 9. Your True Self cannot be afraid of anyone. 10. You break the cord of painful thought toward another person by snipping the connection within your own mind. 11. It is very painful to pretend to be someone. 12. Any sincere effort at bettering your human relations returns a reward. 13. Don't drain your energy by thinking negatively toward people who harm you. 14. You get along with others to the exact degree that you get along with yourself. 15. A real person stands out like a human being among statues.

Whether a person is aware of it or not, he is assaulted constantly by misleading and hostile voices within the mind. They speak both through you and to you. Everyone is their target, but because of their extreme cunning, few people ever detect and dismiss them. So the only problem is a lack of information about these foreign voices. The curing facts are as close as your desire for them. It is extremely important for you to remember the following truth: these hurtful voices are not you, and they do not belong to you, but merely speak through your psychic system. Don't take them as being your own voices, any more than you take radio voices as being your own. They simply use unaware human beings. Your true nature has nothing to do with them. When finally dismissing these sinister speakers you make room for spiritual health and true life.

When a truly mature man has sex with a woman it is the same with him as if he had lunch with her. Afterward he casually remarks to the woman, "That was very nice"---while referring to either the sex or the salad.

The intelligent person ignores what to do. He or she concentrates on what to be. We must put first things first. To be clearminded is first. Obviously, that is the only kind of mind that makes accurate and profitable decisions.

G: I believe your book, "The Mystic Path to Cosmic Power" is your best known work. What on earth does "cosmic power" have to do with my daily life? VH: Ahh! It has nothing to do with the average person's daily life. All they know is mental power, physical power, political power, social power. All of which are very, very destructive. There is power that comes when you no longer have your human power masquerading as something that is good and right. Only the power that comes from a higher place has conscience and goodness and that's part of the purpose of life, to find that.

Remember, you are not your negative thoughts. You are not your painful imaginations. See yourself as separate from your thoughts. This will aid you in dismissing the horror films. Just as fire fades when not fed additional fuel, so do emotional fires fade away when we cease to fuel them with negative imagination.

Think of happiness as a state of inner liberty. That is exactly what it is. It is never anything else. It will help if you forget the word happiness altogether. Substitute the term inner liberty. It works favorably upon your thinking habits. It connects inner liberty with the genuine meaning of happiness. And that puts you on the right track.

Think of happiness as a state of inner liberty. That is exactly what it is. It is never anything else. It will help if you forget the word happiness altogether. Substitute the term inner liberty. It works favorably upon your thinking habits. It connects inner liberty with the genuine meaning of happiness. And that puts you on the right track.

The truth that frees us into health and happiness might be likened to a beautiful woman with a dozen ardent suitors. She asks, "Do you love me above all else, or are you merely seeking a new thrill?" Or, "Will you be faithful to me in spite of temptations?" Or, "Do you want me for myself, or merely to prove how persuasive you are?" The man who gives the right answers will hear the truth respond. She never fails the man who pursues her with ardent sincerity and affection. When he places her before all else, she willingly comes to him.

When understanding another person's problem you help him correctly, even though there is nothing you can do about it.

Whenever we resist something—perhaps an unkind remark, a shocking event, or a depressing feeling—our very resistance indicates a belief in the power of that event to hurt us. Although it is really powerless, our mistaken belief in it induces despair. But by not resisting, we dissolve the false belief and consequently the false power for harm.

There is no real happiness for those on the wrong side. The greatest pleasure in life is the security of the true side. You can vainly try to win over the world or you can nicely be over the world. Your task is to change your operating center from strained imagination to relaxed reality.

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

Now, thought is both good and necessary for the mechanical processes of life, like building a house or cooking dinner. But because your spiritual self is not mechanical, it must be elevated by an entirely different power. That power is awareness.

Don't make a direct effort to understand things. Rather, concentrate on your present misunderstanding. Try to see through your own false viewpoints.

Always walk through life as if you have something new to learn and you will.” - Vernon Howard, Author/Philosopher

Truth is not an idea, belief, concept, memory that we have acquired in order to have security. Happiness and freedom is not found in acquired ideas that always have opposites and references to an image, past or future. We have to leap into the unknown to find what we truly want

To open up to Truth you have to first be so utterly hopeless and to the point you see no good way out of this life. That is where you are pushed to find out for yourself, whether it even exists or not, whether you have a chance, because Truth, Reality, or what some true teachers call God cannot be found in those parts of us that are familiar or known. If you're comfortable with your acquired ideas, your life situation and memories you will never pursue this

Anytime your mind thinks your Psychological state is about to get worse realise it's always been bad and you are only now seeing it!

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

How on earth can another’s thought about you harm you? It is your thought about his thought that harms. Change your thought. ​— ​VERNON HOWARD, THE POWER OF YOUR SUPERMIND.

​VERNON HOWARD, THE POWER OF YOUR SUPERMIND.

How on earth can another’s thought about you harm you? It is your thought about his thought that harms. Change your thought. ​— ​VERNON HOWARD,

Fifty years of internal damage done by the time-self is healed instantaneously by the entrance of the eternal self.

From time to time you will hear someone starting an accusation with the phrase, "But YOU told me...." When hearing this, know that you are hearing someone who demands that you think for him, but who is eager to blame you when things go wrong. Beware of weak and revengeful people who accuse, "But YOU told me....

Know that distress and disappointment are states of stupidity and nothing else. Do not trust them. They have no intelligence whatsoever in them; they can only lead you astray. You are very foolish in being lured after their frantic shrieks. They shout that they are right, but they are always wrong and wrong for you personally. Do not follow deceitful lures of distress and disappointment.

Your wrongness is your present idea of happiness. Try to see how it is wrecking your life. You have one real chance. That once chance is to find yourself wrong. Never forget the first sentence of this paragraph, which is, your wrongness is your present idea of happiness. Replace that idea.

Weakness invites contempt from weak people.

A truly strong person does not need the approval of others any more than a lion needs the approval of sheep.” ― Vernon Howard ―

Try to see that a thought about a person or event is merely a thought about that person or event. It is the thought about them that makes you feel the way you do. To change the way you feel, change the way you think. ​— ​Vernon Howard, The Power of Your Supermind.