Vernon Howard Quotations

Our freedom can be measured by the number of things we can walk away from.

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.

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

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

To change what you get you must change who you are.

Just be honest with yourself. That opens the door.

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.

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.

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

We must become acquainted with our emotional household: we must see our feelings as they actually are, not as we assume they are. This breaks their hypnotic and damaging hold on us.

We are exactly where we have chosen to be.

Truth is not a matter of personal viewpoint.

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

It is a true miracle when a man finally sees himself as his only opposition.

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

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

Study carefully the law of cause and effect.

Freedom begins as we become conscious of it.

A clear understanding of negative emotions dismisses them.

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.

Stucy carefully the law of cause and effect.

Happiness is liberty from everything that makes us unhappy.

You must never fear anything at all.

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

Change is never a loss - it is change only.

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 Truth must be told at all costs, no matter how unpopular it may be. The authentic spiritual leader, having freed himself of his own false need to be popular, tells the Truth whether it falls on fertile or stony ground. Such a teacher is the salt of the earth, though few know it. If you think the world is delirious as is, you would find it intolerable without his healing influence.

You need only choose ... then keep choosing as many times as necessary. That is all you need do. And it is certainly something you can do. Then as you continue to choose, everything is yours.

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.

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.

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

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

You see everything depends upon the psychological headquarters from which we live. 'Where am I living from?' Ask yourself that question. If you don't like your headquarters, you can move any time you like. Break away. Don't tell anyone about it. Others will either smile tolerantly or mouth sanctimonious babble. Make your escape plans in secret. Never mind if you lose certain friends, you will find others who also have dared. They will be ten-thousand times more valuable to you.

Bitterness is the outcome of a wrong mental movement - the attempt to force external events to conform to internal fantasy. The cure is to see fantasy as fantasy, which will reveal it as neither necessary nor rewarding.

One of society's absurd delusions is that the spending of money can cure something.

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

We cannot be free of nagging desires through suppression. This is like trying to keep a rubber boat beneath the water. But we remove compulsive desires altogether by understanding their nature.

It is wise to seek immortality for time defeats all other ambitions.

Pseudo-mysticism seeks to evade reality; authentic mysticism wants to live it.

We can no more enjoy life by hoping for a future result than we can enjoy music by waiting for the final note.

The answers come when you are quietly willing to be without them.

The world consists of imaginary people, claiming imaginary virtues and suffering from imaginary happiness.

The problem is not what other people think, do or say; it is your reaction.

Who asks a king for a penny?

The only reason you do not do great things is because you timidly cling to small things. Will you let loose of small things and bear the uncertainty of having nothing for a while? Do this and eventually you will do great things.

We can become slaves to things we don't understand

When one plan that you have, to get this or to get that, to advance in the world, or whatever it might be, when that seems in danger of veering off the path you have set for it, you have your emergency plan ready. And in simple language what that emergency plan is, what you put into operation, is called worry. If you can worry you are occupied, and what an incredible human situation it is!

Don't try to live. Let yourself be lived.

The outer storm ceases the moment the inner storm ends, for they are the same storm.

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

Insight into the two selves within a man clears up many confusions and contradictions. It was our understanding that preceded our victory.

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

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

Your central self is totally untouched by grief, confusion, desperation.

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

When the mind is exhausted in trying to find the answer, the answer dawns.

There exists a special self which takes every event as if it were the very thing you wanted to happen. That self is the Supermind, which is never upset by anything. Your goal is to nourish it into greater strength. Then, every step is sunlit.

Cruelty practiced as a matter of social principle or public policy, and presented to the community as a means to a higher goal is the most obscene and decadent phenomenon of any civilization.

Genuine effort is success.

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

Self awakening enables you to see the human scene as it is, not as it appears to be, which frees you of its chaos.

We find the light only after total defeat of our attempts to deceive and outwit it.

Realize that the surface personality has no interest in anything which might disturb its darling delusions.

Mysticism is: a. An advanced state of inner enlightenment. b. Union with Reality. c. A state of genuinely satisfying success. d. Insight into an entirely new world of living. e. An intuitive grasp of Truth, above and beyond intellectual reasoning. f. A personal experience, in which we are happy and healthy human beings.

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

Be very careful that you do not unconsciously assume that nervous tension is power. This is vital. Watch yourself the next time you work toward some goal. Look very closely to discover tense feelings and nervous thoughts whirling around inside. Do not let them deceive you into assuming that they are creative forces; they are not. They are thieves of genuine powers. As always, your awareness of their thievery is your first fine step toward casting them out.

Resistance to the disturbance is the disturbance.

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.

Inner liberty can be judged by how often a person feels offended, for you can no more insult a mature man than you can paint the air.

All heartache is caused by wrong viewpoints.

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

The reason why most people are frustrated is because a lie cannot be turned into a truth.

Persistence prevails, like a stream that is temporarily blocked by boulders and then collects force enough to overflow onward.

There is no way reality can be prevented from flowing the way it flows. It is our vain attempts to force it to flow in the service of our imaginary needs which sets us in painful conflict with our- selves and nature. You are not separate from the flowing reality; you are that flowing reality. See this and you will not see any- thing else which conflicts with it. You will be what you see.

You can end half your troubles immediately by no longer permitting people to tell you what you want.

If heaven existed as a physical building on earth, human beings would remodel it to make it right.

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

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.

When you are genuinely strong, you neither attack nor defend and so retain your energy.

Genuine kindness is not what we do, it is what we are.

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

Men have the illusion of having a duty to make the world spin properly, which is precisely what makes it wobble.

It is utterly useless to try to change the outer world, for it is but a reflection of inner causes. The true seeker seeks to change himself.

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

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

Find yourself for courage and confidence are as easy as breathing to the person who really knows who he is.

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

Have the daring to stop doing the things you really don't want to do. Can you see them? Look closely. Can you observe the many things you do because you reluctantly feel you should or must? Watch closely. Examine every action and reaction. Do you act naturally or do you act because you feel compelled? If you feel compelled, stop. Compulsion is slavery. Example: Refuse to go along with the crowd.

How would you feel if you had no fear? Feel like that. How would you behave toward other people if you realized their powerlessness to hurt you? Behave like that. How would your react to so-called misfortune if you saw its inability to bother you? React like that. How would you think toward yourself if you knew you were really all right? Think like that.

Everyone must concede that there is in existence something wiser than himself. Now there is a challenge, there is a challenge which few even investigate. We're going to do that now. Let's see what we're talking about. All troubled people, which is all people, must if they are going to be delivered from themselves, must make the concession that there is a force, an entity, a power that is higher than their own present nature.

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

Just as surely as distress must follow self-deceit, healing must follow self-honesty.

Living in the now is freedom from all problems connected with time. You ought to remember that sentence, you ought to memorize it, and ought to take it out, you ought to practice it, you ought to apply it. And most of all, you ought to rejoice in it because you have just heard how not to be wretched, miserable you any more but to be a brand new, and forever brand new man or woman.

No one can tell you what is right for you except yourself. So start telling yourself what to do. If you blunder for ten years while thinking for yourself, that is rich treasure when compared with living these ten years under the mental domination of another.

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.

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.

Awareness of your weakness and confusion makes you strong because conscious awareness is the bright light that destroys the darkness of negativity. Detection of inner negativity is not a negative act, but a courageously positive act that makes you a new person.

Interpretation blocks reception while masquerading as reception. Rightness does not need interpretation; it requires simple acceptance and nothing else.