"When you make up your mind that you are done with poverty forever; that you will have nothing more to do with it; that you are going to erase every trace of it from your dress, your personal appearance, your manner, your talk, your actions, your home;
that you are going to show the world your real mettle;
that you are no longer going to pass for a failure;
that you have set your face persistently toward better things a competence, an independence and that nothing on earth can turn you from your resolution, you will be amazed to find what a reinforcing power will come to you, what an increase of confidence, reassurance, and self-respect.
The very act of turning your back upon the black picture and resolving that you will have nothing more to do with failure, with poverty; that you will make the best possible out of what you do have;
that you will put up the best possible appearance; that you will clean up, brush up, talk up, look up, instead of down hold your head up and look the world in the faces instead of cringing, whining, complaining will create a new spirit within you which will lead you to the light.
Hope will take the place of despair, and you will feel the thrill of a new power, of a new force coursing through your veins.
Thousands of people in this country have thought themselves away from a life of poverty by getting a glimpse of that great principle, that we tend to realize in the life what we persistently hold in the thought and vigorously struggle toward."
~~Orison Swett Marsden, in Peace, Power and Plenty.
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"Economy is a poor man's revenue; extravagance, a rich man's ruin." ~~??, frontspiece, The American Frugal Housewife, by Lydia Maria Child, Harper & Row, 1836 edition (dedicated to those who are not ashamed of economy).
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