New Thought

“ The value, the potency of ideals is the great practical truth on which the New Thought most strongly insists,—the development namely from within outward, from small to great.57Consequently one's thought should be centred on the ideal outcome, even though this trust be literally like a step in the dark.58 To attain the ability thus effectively to direct the mind, the New Thought advises the practice of concentration, or in other words, the attainment of self-control. ”

“ If I were one hundred years old, and in possession of my faculties, I would not hesitate to undertake a new enterprise which offered a hope of bettering my condition.
Thought is eternal in its effects, and every hopeful thought which enters the mind sets vibrations in motion, which shall help minds millions of miles distant and lives yet unborn. ”

“ The New Thought is quite different. It is so broad and comprehensive in its bearing upon human life and human happiness that it can only be defined by its name, New Thought. Mr. Atkinson's new book not only explains what the law is upon which New Thought is based, but teaches how it may be used to the greatest good of men. ”

“ The tendency of our New Thought development is to teach lives to pass more and more into the inside power or, in other words, to come into the unseen laws of being and work consciously with the energy that creates and which is unmanifested, while at the same time they manipulate the manifested, external things, and through the understanding of the finite are able to bring into expression the absolute power. ”

“ Is it in parlors that the sea of human thought ebbs and flows most freely? That mind meets mind, ideas are interchanged, and the soul grows by contact with its kind? Is it in parlors that art is talked? politics? business? affairs of state? new lights in science? ”

“ Doubtless this will imply changes in our old mode of thinking; but these changes are not forced upon us, they are brought about naturally by the new stand-point from which we now see things. Almost imperceptibly to ourselves we grow into a New Order of Thought which proceeds, not from a knowledge of good and evil, but from the Principle of Life itself. That is what makes the difference between our old thought and our new thought. Our old thought was based upon a comparison of limited facts: our new thought is based upon a comprehension of principles. ”

“ Very often we are inspired to think by others, but in our hearts we have the New Thought; and the person, the book, the incident, merely remind us that it is already ours. New Thought is always simple ”

“ By thee fact to be justified, blended with thought, Thought of man justified, blended with God, Through thy idea, lo, the immortal reality! Through thy reality, lo, the immortal idea! 3 Brain of the New World, what a task is thine, To formulate the Modern—out of the peerless grandeur of the modern, Out of thyself, comprising science, to recast poems, churches, art, (Recast, may-be discard them, end them—maybe their work is done, who knows?) ”

“ The world is not so much in need of new thoughts as that when thought grows old and worn with usage it should, like current coin, be called in, and, from the mint of genius, reissued fresh and new. ”

“ But I suppose the feature of the New Thought which is the greatest stumbling-block to those who view the movement from the outside is the claim it makes for Thought-power as an active factor in the affairs of daily life. ”

“ And new life o'er their ruins dawns;'
yet, as in all past times, new interpretations and adjustments of the beliefs and the creeds of the fathers will be found to reconcile fundamental principles in religion and in morals with the older inspirations and the newer readings of the Book of Nature, and we may unquestionably hope that, in the future as in the past, the newer readings will tend toward evolution of higher thought, nobler life, more perfectly ideal and spiritual philosophy. ”

“ But when the new ideas have become common property, and when a new expansion of thought has taken place in other directions,—in science, literature, religion,—it begins to be felt that a fresh synthesis is required to do perfect justice to the increased complexity of human life. ”

“ We emerged into a brief independence of will, made our personal innovation, became, as it were, new thoughts in that great intelligence, new elements of effort and purpose, and were presently incorporated or forgotten or both in its immortal growth. ”

“ We are standing at the portals of a new age, and new conceptions have arisen of the purpose which we are here to accomplish and of the means of help we can command in the attempt to realize our destiny. These new conceptions we call The New Ideal. It is the purpose of our present discourse to compare some salient features of the old and new.
The old and new Ideals agree in looking to an Infinite beyond the borders of experience, for it is in the nature of the ideal to lift us above the merely real. ”

“ ‘In the course of years!’ ‘It is not a new one!’ New thoughts and hopes were whirling through my mind, and all the colours of my life were changing. ”

“ Again it may be said that we combine old concepts into new ones, conceiving thus such realities as the ether, God, souls, or what not, of which our sensible life alone would leave us altogether ignorant. ”

“ Minds develop. New knowledge comes. People's ideas and feelings change—some people's. These new ideas and feelings seek expression ion the natural forms—speech and literature, as is legitimate and right. ”

“ It was as if the human soul had entered a new body, or as if the human body had received a new soul. Not least among the significant evidences of the new life were the rise of the study of history and the awakening of a keener and more practical interest in men and things the wide world over. ”

“ That humanity is seeking a new message, a new light upon the meaning of life, and something tangible, as it were, with which it can work towards a larger understanding of itself and its relation to the universe, is a fact I think none will gainsay. ”

“ I long to live so that I can explore what is no less than a new world to me. Do you want to know what this new world is? I think you can guess what it is. It is the world in which I have been living. Sorrow, then, and all that it teaches one, is my new world.... ”

“ And it is precisely this shape, this form, this principle, this hope, this dream, this essential motive of those sons of the universe whose existence is implied "when two and three are gathered together," which would be destroyed and annihilated, if the complex vision were transformed into something else and a new world took the place of the old. ”

“ I had been trying to educate myself in the new and wonderful cosmogony of growth which was first enunciated in the sixties, and was going to be, as I firmly believed, the basis of a new philosophy, a new system of ethics, a new poetry, a new everything. ”

“ The new heart, and the right spirit,—the change, not in the mere external behavior but, in the very disposition and inclination of the soul,—excludes every jot and tittle of self-assertion, every particle of proud and stoical manhood. ”

“ And not only are things new, but the new things are, on the general average, a bit more advanced than the last. Advanced towards what? Towards perfection, towards greater happiness, a fuller and more enduring life. ”

“ Note thou carefully that in this world of being, all things must ever be made new. Look at the material world about thee, see how it hath now been renewed. The thoughts have changed, the ways of life have been revised, the sciences and arts show a new vigour, discoveries and inventions are new, perceptions are new. ”

“ But, assuming he is right, there will always be found some compensating reaction in another sphere of intellectual activity which is in process of development; and through which, by some divine alchemy, providence, or nature, call it what you will, a new manifestation will be made to the world. ”

“ As one gazes with holy admiration at this theophany of truth in renewed manifestation, and watches the changing effects, the action of the Spirit of New Life becomes apparent; the adaptation of the new growth to progress becomes a living experience, the facts become vital in significance to help others to live beautifully and truly. ”

“ If some of us felt that these, in a sense "new," truths were rather hurried upon us, often crudely expressed and applied; we knew that each generation must seek its own light, and add something to inherited wisdom. ”

“ Let them then become organs of the Holy Ghost; let them be lovers; let them behold truth; and their eyes are uplifted, their wrinkles smoothed, they are perfumed again with hope and power. This old age ought not to creep on a human mind. In nature every moment is new; the past is always swallowed and forgotten; the coming only is sacred. Nothing is secure but life, transition, the energizing spirit. No love can be bound by oath or covenant to secure it against a higher love. No truth so sublime but it may be trivial to-morrow in the light of new thoughts. ”

“ In our day a new ideal is in process of formation, which sees in suffering a condition of life, a condition of happiness, and which in the name of a new culture combats all that we have hitherto called culture. ”

“ The reverence for nature, for its symbolism, the sanctions of religion, the transcendental belief, the poetic insight have somewhat fallen away, and the world is partly barren because not yet rehabilitated. Ideals are regarded as fit for schoolgirl essays, for weakly sentimentality, for dreamers, for those who do not understand the meaning of the new science and the new civilization. Ideals! The transcendent importance of ideals is just appearing. ”

“ They habitually look, not only "through nature up to nature's God," but through the wide expanse of the social and moral world around them,—through the habits, opinions, and institutions, of their time and country,—through the strife of politics, and the din of the unruly multitude,—to that eternal Being who reigns above them all; whose will and whose counsels are in truth interwoven with them all,—and who works out His own great designs as surely by the operation of these jarring and unruly elements, as by the more tranquil and steady processes of the world of inanimate nature. ”

“ And we live in a society in which the new ideas are already putting forth shoots, the real, new ideas, the true, the beautiful ideas, the three or four beautiful ideas that already exist. But I, for my part, have my blood so full of old ideas that I can't advance with the rest.... ”

“ It is obvious that in everyday life when by arguments, persuasion, suggestion, punishment, exhortation, or prayer we change the viewpoint of a person, we do so by building up complexes which shall act as settings and give new meanings to his ideas. I 369may add, if we wish to sway him to carry this new viewpoint to fulfilment through action we introduce into the complex an emotion which by the driving force of its impulses shall carry the ideas to practical fruition. ”

“ No philosopher in the world, we may roundly say, would ever have put it so, and yet how effectually is thus revealed what it means to get the power of the new life thoroughly incorporated with our blood and breath. ”

“ The new ideas become the centre of attention, the whole world begins to appear in a new light, everything which was harmless becomes full of meaning and suggestion, new problems awake, and the new ideas irradiate over the whole mental mechanism. ”

“ The attainment of it depends not so much upon a philosophy accepted, or a new gift of vision suddenly received, as upon an uninterrupted changing and widening of character; a progressive growth towards the Real, an ever more profound harmonisation of the self's life with the greater and inclusive rhythms of existence. ”

“ Abstract considerations about the soul and the reality of a moral order will not do in a year what the glimpse into a world of new phenomenal possibilities enveloping those of the present life, afforded by an extension of our insight into the order of nature, would do in an instant. ”

“ Some new things, as we look frankly upon them, willing to comprehend their real character, have come to assume the aspect of things long believed in and familiar, stuff of our own convictions. We have been refreshed by a new insight into our own life. ”

“ Only these form new plans of life, new modes of action; only these revalue the objects which are then pursued day by day by innumerable individuals. A new idea becomes feeling and motive power, at first with one individual, then with a few, then with many, and finally with all. ”

“ The secret of its extraordinary success lies in the fact that it refers the new to the old, the strange to the familiar, the unknown to the known, that which is not comprehended to what is already understood and thus constitutes a part of our mental furniture; that it transforms the difficult and unaccustomed into the accustomed and causes us to grasp everything new by means of old-time, well-known, ideas. ”

“ When once the inward core of things has been grasped and the transforming experience has occurred, making a new man—freed, illuminated, sin-delivered, with "God the Life of the life and the Soul of the soul" [25] —the outward forms and the external things will fall into the right perspective and will receive their proper emphasis. ”

“ Thus self-involved, it is sunk in the night of its self-consciousness: but in that night its vanished being is preserved, and that being, thus in idea preserved,—old, but now new-born of the spirit,—is the new sphere of being, a new world, a new phase of mind. ”

“ The truth seems to be that, by an imperceptible process, new values and hopes have been replacing the traditional ones, and that these values and aims both find themselves in harmony with the new knowledge and rest upon it. ”