lots after strong people, and lie in wait for good folks--or alleged
good folks--hoping to be able to attach ourselves to them. The only way
to secure friends is to be one. And before you are fit for friendship
you must be able to do without it. That is to say, you must have
sufficient self-reliance to take care of yourself, and then out of the
surplus of your energy you can do for others.

The individual who craves friendship, and yet desires a self-centered
spirit more, will never lack for friends.

If you would have friends, cultivate solitude instead of society. Drink
in the ozone; bathe in the sunshine; and out in the silent night, under
the stars, say to yourself again and yet again, "I am a part of all my
eyes behold!" And the feeling then will come to you that you are no
mere interloper between earth and heaven; but you are a necessary part
of the whole. No harm can come to you that does not come to all, and if
you shall go down it can only be amid a wreck of worlds.

Like old Job, that which we fear will surely come upon us. By a wrong
mental attitude we have set in motion a train of events that ends in
disaster. People who die in middle life from disease, almost without
exception, are those who have been preparing for death. The acute tragic
condition is simply the result of a chronic state of mind--a culmination
of a series of events.

Character is the result of two things, mental attitude, and the way we
spend our time. It is what we think and what we do that make us what
we are.

By laying hold on the forces of the universe, you are strong with them.