As a Man Thinketh -

James Allen

Poetose Press

1903

44 páginas

1h 28m

ISBN-13: 9798612960485

"As a Man Thinketh" is an essay by James Allen, originally self-published in 1903. Born in England 1864, James Allen's father was struggling in the textile business. He traveled to New York City to seek employment when Allen was 15 years old. Sadly, he was robbed and murdered just days after his arrival. Allen was forced to leave school and worked to help support the household. Holding onto the intelectual practice of reading and writing that his father instilled in him, Allen studied his fathers books on ethics, religion and philosophy during his lunch breaks and well into the evenings. Feeling stuck and without direction, he was striving to find purpose and meaning for life. In 1889, Allen found new employment outside of the factory working as a secretary and continued to contemplate the world religions and it became clear to him that the underlining message was self-development and inner refinement. He began writing his own thoughts and in 1903, Allen wrote "As a Man Thinketh" to encapsulate the idea that our thoughts are causitive and that thought is the cause of oneself. The title may have been inspired by the proverb "as he thinketh in his heart, so is he".

Resenhas (1)

3.5 (Bom)

Thoughts make up the man

I agree with the primary concept of the book that thoughts make up the man, be it positive or negative thoughts.

There are some good ideas in the book. Although the idea that we make our circumstances, I don’t completely agree with because sometimes the circumstances are out of our control, even though we can control the way we act on those circumstances, they are circumstances that are too traumatizing to have complete control of how we act especially if it is in the younger years of our life.

Another thing I don’t agree with is that honorable men always succeed in life, because there is a lot of injustice in the world, there are bad men or corrupt men who have more success in life than they deserve. Sometimes the character of a man doesn’t affect the outcome of his life.

Interesting book. Maybe I need to reread the book to get a better understanding.