The last of three books published in Florence Scovel Shinn’s lifetime, “The Secret Door to Success” provides guidance to readers on how to find their (divinely designed) path to success and abundance.
In typical Shinn style, each chapter begins with a biblical reference followed by metaphysical and psychological commentary. The book is peppered with real-life stories that add color to the narrative and help hammer the points home.
There’s a strong emphasis on the power of affirmations, faith, and mental discipline in manifesting desires. One of my favorite parts is the strong message about how words, in the form of affirmations, can help to tame and transform our thoughts.
Some important themes in the book include:
- The power of intuition and divine guidance
- The use of affirmations
- Maintaining a strong sense of faith
- Trust in divine timing,
- The importance of positive expectations and outcomes
- Overcoming obstacles and limiting beliefs
- Handling negative thoughts
- Getting through the darkness before the dawn
- Moving on from the past
- Finding your true-life path
- Understanding that divine provision is always available
The book is a great historical reference point for the New Thought Movement. Many of the ideas conveyed are as important today as they were then.
Best Quotes From the Secret Door to Success
Here’s a list of 108 of the best quotes from “The Secret Door to Success” by Florence Scovel Shinn, divided into the following categories:
- Abundance and Prosperity
- Emotional Barriers
- Faith and Action
- Mindset and Success
- Overcoming Limitations and Barriers
- Personal Growth and Transformation
- Self-Awareness and Consciousness
- Spiritual Guidance and Intuition
- Thoughts and Manifestation
Abundance and Prosperity
- “Be wide awake to your intuitive leads, and suddenly, you find yourself in your Promised Land.”
- “In the superconscious, there is a lavish supply for every demand, and your good is perfect and permanent.”
- “Many people lead lives of limitation, hoarding and saving, afraid to use what they have; which brings more lack and more limitation.”
- “Nothing is too good to be true, nothing is too wonderful to happen, nothing is too good to last, when you look to Good for your good.”
- “Some people attract prosperity, but cannot hold it. Sometimes their heads are turned, sometimes they lose it through fear and worry.”
- “The law is impersonal, and a dishonest person with rich thoughts will attract riches – but, ‘a thing ill-got has ever bad success,’ as Shakespeare says. It will be of short duration and will not bring happiness.”
- “There is a lavish supply, divinely planned for each individual. The rich man is tapping it, for rich thoughts produce rich surroundings. Change your thoughts, and in the twinkling of an eye, all your conditions change. Your world is a world of crystallized ideas, crystallized words.”
- “With the realization of wealth, we receive the gift of wealth. With the realization of success, we receive the gift of success, for success and abundance are states of mind.”
- “You must have a great desire for financial freedom, you must feel yourself rich, you must see yourself rich, you must continually prepare for riches. Become as a little child and make believe you are rich. You are then impressing the subconscious with expectancy.”
- “Your good precedes you; it gets there before you do. But how to catch up with your good? For you must have ears that hear, and eyes that see, or it will escape you.”
- “’The Lord is your Shepherd: you shall not want.’ ‘If one door shuts, another door opens.’”
- “As the old saying is, ‘there are no two ways about it.’ You are either heading for lack, or heading for abundance. The man with a rich consciousness and the man with a poor consciousness are not walking on the same mental street.”
- “Now let each one think of the good which seems so difficult to attain. It may be health, wealth, happiness or perfect self-expression. Do not think how your good can be accomplished, just give thanks that you have already received on the invisible plane, ‘therefore the steps leading up to it are secured also.’”
- “The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want. Psalms 23:1… It tells man he shall never want, when he has the realization (or conviction) that the Lord is his Shepherd: the realization that Infinite Intelligence supplies every need. If you get this conviction today, every need will be met now and forever-more; you will draw, instantly, from the abundance of the spheres, whatever you desire or require; for what you need is already on your pathway.”
- “We might say, according to your expectancies be it done unto you; so, what are you expecting? We hear people say: ‘We expect the worst to happen,’ or ‘The worst is yet to come.’ They are deliberately inviting the worst to come. We hear others say: ‘I expect a change for the better.’ They are inviting better conditions into their lives.”
- “You seek the Lord by making your affirmation, expecting and preparing for your good. If you ask for success and prepare for failure, you will receive the thing you have prepared for.”
Emotional Barriers
- “All the organs of the body are affected by resentment – for when you resent, you resent with every organ of the body. You pay the penalty with rheumatism, arthritis, neuritis, etc., for acid thoughts produce acid in the blood. All this trouble comes because you are fighting the battle, not leaving it to the long arm of God.”
- “Find the thought which is your great oppressor; find the ‘king-pin.’ In the logging camps in the Spring, the logs are sent down the rivers in great numbers. Sometimes the logs become crossed and cause a jam. The men look for the log causing the jam (they call it the King-Pin), straighten it, and the logs rush down the river again. Maybe your King-Pin is resentment. Resentment holds back your good. The more you resent, the more you will have to resent; you grow a resentment track in your brain, and your expression will be one of habitual resentment. You will be avoided and miss the golden opportunities which await you each day.”
- “If you are a failure and resent the success of someone else, you are keeping away your own success. I have given the following statement to neutralize envy and resentment. ‘What God has done for others, He now does for me and more.’ A woman was filled with envy because a friend had received a gift, she made this statement, and an exact duplicate of the gift was given her – plus another present.”
- “In every act prompted by fear lies the germ of its own defeat.”
- “Talk about your affairs as little as possible, and then only to the ones who will give you encouragement and inspiration. The world is full of ‘Wet blankets,’ people who tell you ‘it can’t be done,’ that you are aiming too high.”
- “Talking too much about your affairs, scattering your forces, brings you up against a high wall.”
- “Your big opportunity and big success usually slide in, when you least expect it. You have to let go long enough for the great law of attraction to operate. You never saw a worried and anxious magnet. It stands up straight and hasn’t a care in the world, because it knows the needles can’t help jumping to it. The things we rightly desire come to pass when we have taken the clutch off.”
- “I say in my correspondence course, ‘Do not let your heart’s desire become your heart’s disease.’ You are completely demagnetized when you desire something too intensely. You worry, fear, and agonize. There is an occult law of indifference – ‘None of these things move me.’ Your ships come in over a don’t care sea.”
- “If you prepare for what you fear or don’t want, you begin to attract it. David said, ‘The thing I feared has come upon me.’ We hear people say, ‘I must put away money in case of illness.’ They are deliberately preparing to be ill. Or, ‘I’m saving for a rainy day.’ The rainy day is sure to come, at a most inconvenient time.”
- “There is an occult law of indifference. ‘None of these things move me.’ ‘None of these things disturb me’ we might say in modern language. When you can no longer be disturbed, all disturbance will disappear from the external.”
- “Who is the enemy ‘before thee.’ The negative thought-forms which you have built up in your subconscious mind. A man’s enemies are only those of his own household. The everlasting arms thrust out these enemy thoughts and destroy them.”
Faith and Action
- “Armchair faith or rocking chair faith, will never move mountains. In the armchair, in the silence, or meditation, you are filled with the wonder of this Truth, and feel that your faith will never waver. You know that The Lord is your Shepherd, you shall never want. You feel that your God of Plenty will wipe out all burdens of debt or limitations. Then you leave your armchair and step out into the arena of Life. It is only what you do in the arena that counts.”
- “In the arena of Life we must keep ourselves tuned-up to concert pitch. Are we acting from motives of fear or faith? Watch your motives with all diligence, for out of them are the issues of life.”
- “Only those who have prepared for their good (thereby showing active faith) will bring the manifestation to pass”
Mindset and Success
- “A successful man is always asked – ‘What is the secret of your success?’ People never ask a man who is a failure, What is the secret of your failure? It is quite easy to see and they are not interested. People all want to know how to open the secret door of success. For each man there is success, but it seems to be behind a door or wall.”
- “Henry Ford was past middle age when the idea of the Ford car came to him. He had great difficulty in raising the money. His friends thought it was a crazy idea. His father said to him, tearfully, ‘Henry, why do you give up a good twenty-five dollar a week job in order to chase a crazy idea?’ But no one could rock Henry Ford’s boat.”
- “It takes much strength and courage to trust God. We often trust him in little things, but when it comes to a big situation we feel we had better attend to it ourselves; then comes defeat and failure.”
- “Taking an interest in your work, enjoying what you are doing opens the secret door to success.”
- “That is the Secret of Success, to make what you are doing interesting to other people. Be interested yourself, and others will find you interesting. A good disposition, a smile, often opens the secret door.”
- “The average person will dwell on all the obstacles and hindrances which are there to prevent his good coming to pass. You ‘combine with what you notice,’ so if you give obstacles and hindrances your undivided attention, they grow worse and worse.”
- “The average person will tell you almost anything can’t be done.”
- “The road to success is a straight and narrow path; it is a road of loving absorption, of undivided attention. You attract the things you give a great deal of thought to. So if you give a great deal of thought to lack, you attract lack, if you give a great deal of thought to injustice, you attract more injustice.”
- “We have the power to choose our thoughts.”
- “With the average person (who has thought in terms of lack for a long time) it is very difficult to build up a rich consciousness.”
- “Your success and happiness in life depend upon the watchman at the gate of your thoughts, for your thoughts, sooner or later, crystallize on the external.”
- “All inventors catch up with the ideas of the articles they invent. I say in my book, ‘The Game of Life and How To Play It,’ the telephone was seeking Bell.”
- “So we find we have success through being strong and very courageous in following spiritual law. We are back again to the ‘fork in the road’ – the necessity of choice. ‘Choose you this day whom ye will serve,’ the intellect or divine guidance.”
Overcoming Limitations and Barriers
- “Do not be fooled by the darkness before the dawn. It is a good thing to see the dawn once in a while, to convince you how unfailing it is.”
- “Living in the past, complaining of your misfortunes, builds a thick wall around your Jerico.”
- “Many people are up against the wall of discouragement. Courage and endurance are part of the system. We read this in lives of all successful men and women.”
- “Many people put up with limited conditions because they are too lazy (mentally), to think themselves out of them.”
- “Nearly everyone has built a wall around his own Jericho. This city you are not able to enter, contains great treasures; your divinely designed, your heart’s desire.”
- “Non-resistance is an art. When acquired, The World is Yours! So many people are trying to force situations. Your lasting good will never come through forcing personal will.”
- “People think by running away from a negative situation, they will be rid of it, but the same situation confronts them wherever they go. They will meet the same experiences until they have learned their lessons. This idea is brought out in the moving picture, ‘The Wizard of Oz.’”
- “So find your king-pin (you may have more than one); and your logs of success, happiness and abundance will go rushing down your river.”
- “There is, indeed, a wilderness to pass through before your Promised Land is reached. The old doubts and fears encamp round about you, but, there is always someone to tell you to go forward! There is always a Moses on your pathway. Sometimes it is a friend, sometimes intuition!”
- “What kind of wall have you built around your Jericho? Often, it is a wall of resentment – resenting someone, or resenting a situation, shots off your good.”
- “Your doubts and fears keep you in slavery; you face a situation which seems hopeless. What can you do? It is a case of making bricks without straw. But remember the words of Jehovah, ‘Go therefore now, and work; for there shall no straw be given you, yet shall ye deliver the tale (number) of bricks.’ You shall make bricks without straw. God makes a way where there is no way.”
- “The life in Egypt under foreign oppression is the symbol of man under the hard taskmasters of Destructive thinking, Pride, Fear, Resentment, Ill-will, etc. The deliverance under Moses is the freedom man gains from the taskmasters, as he learns the law of life, for we can never come under grace, except we first know the law.”
Personal Growth and Transformation
- “Change your expectancies and you change your conditions. How can you change your expectancies, when you have formed the habit of expecting loss, lack or failure? Begin to act as if you expected success, happiness and abundance; prepare for your good.”
- “Do something to show you expect it to come. Active faith alone, will impress the subconscious. If you have spoken the word for a home, prepare for it immediately, as if you hadn’t a moment to lose. Collect little ornaments, table-cloths, etc. etc.!”
- “Get the realization that every blessing is Good in action, and see God in every face and good in every situation. This makes you master of all conditions.”
- “People who live in the past have severed their contact with the wonderful now. God knows only the now. Now is the appointed time, today is the day.”
- “Remember, now is the appointed time! Today is the day! And your good can happen over night. Look with wonder at that which is before you!”
- “The most important thing in life, is to bring the divine plan to pass. Just as the picture of the oak is in the acorn, the divine design of your life is in your superconscious mind, and you must work out the perfect pattern in your affairs. You will then lead a magic life, for in the divine design, all conditions are permanently perfect.”
- “We really lead magic lives, guided and provided for at every step if we have ears to hear and eyes that see. Of course we have left the plane of the intellect and are drawing from the superconscious, the God within, which says, ‘This is the way, walk ye in it.’ Whatever you should know, will be revealed to you. Whatever you lack, will be provided!”
- “You cannot enter the Kingdom of Abundance bemoaning your lot.”
- “Of course the Bible is speaking of states of consciousness. You are in a wilderness or desert, when you are out of harmony – when you are angry, resentful, fearful or undecided. Indecision is the cause of much ill health, being unable to make up your mind.”
- “People defy the divine design when they are asleep to their good. Perhaps the woman who liked to lie in bed most of the day and read magazines should be writing for magazines, but her habits of laziness dulled all desire to go forward. The fishes who desired wings, were alert and alive, they did not spend their days on the bed of the ocean, reading ‘Vogue’ and ‘Harper’s Bazaar.’”
- “Some people never catch up with their good in life; they will say, ‘My life has always been one of hardship, no good luck ever comes to me.’ They are the people who have been asleep to their opportunities; or through laziness, haven’t caught up with their good.”
- “Think of the joy of really being free forever, from the Pharaoh of the oppression. To have the idea of security, health, happiness and abundance established in the subconscious. It would mean a life free from all limitation! It would be the Kingdom which Jesus Christ spoke of, where all things are automatically added unto us. I say automatically added unto us, because all life is vibration; and when we vibrate to success, happiness and abundance, the things which symbolize these states of consciousness will attach themselves to us. Feel rich and successful, and suddenly you receive a large cheque or a beautiful gift.”
- “You must form the habit of living in the fourth dimension, ‘The World of the Wondrous.’ It is the world where you do not judge by appearances. You have trained your inner eye to see through failure into success, to see through sickness into health to see through limitation into plenty”
Self-Awareness and Consciousness
- “Every day examine your consciousness and see just what you are preparing for. You are fearful of lack and hang on to every cent, thereby attracting more lack. Use what you have with wisdom and it opens the way for more to come to you.”
- “We take an affirmation and repeat it continually, while our thoughts are on the rampage. We cannot always control our thoughts, but we can control our words, and repetition impresses the subconscious, and we are then master of the situation.”
Spiritual Guidance and Intuition
- “All suffering comes from the violation of intuition. Unless intuition builds the house, they labor in vain who build it. Get the habit of hunching, then you will always be on the magic path.”
- “Inspiration (which is divine guidance) is the most important thing in life. People come to Truth meetings for inspiration. I find the right word will start divine activity operating in their affairs.”
- “Intuition is a spiritual faculty high above the reasoning mind, but on that path is all that you desire or require.”
- “Man’s part is to be wide awake to his leads and hunches; for on the magic path of Intuition is all that he desires or requires.”
- “Misfortune is due to failure to stick to the things which spirit has revealed through intuition. All big things have been accomplished by men who stuck to their big ideas.”
- “Now it is necessary for you to make a decision, you face a fork in the road. Ask for a definite unmistakable lead, and you will receive it.”
- “So, as we reach the fork in the road today, let us fearlessly follow the voice of intuition.”
- “Sometimes you are tempted to follow the reasoning mind, and argue with your intuitive leads, suddenly the Hand of Destiny pushes you into your right place, and under grace, you find yourself back on the magic path again.”
- “Spiritual development means the ability to stand still, or stand aside, and let Infinite Intelligence lift your burdens and fight your battles.”
- “The intuitive person is never undecided: he is given his leads and hunches, and goes boldly ahead, knowing he is on the magic path.”
- “When you have asked for the Divine Plan of your life to manifest, you are protected from getting the things that are not in the Divine Plan.”
- “‘Watch and pray lest ye enter into the temptation’ of preparing for something destructive instead of something constructive.”
- “I am divinely led, I follow the right fork in the road. God makes a way where there is no way.”
- “In this 43rd chapter of Isaiah, are many wonderful statements, showing the irresistible power of Supreme Intelligence, coming to man’s rescue in times of trouble. No matter how impossible the situation seems, Infinite Intelligence knows the way out.”
- “Now if we read the word Lord (law) it will give us the key to the statement. The fear of the law (Karmic law) is the beginning of wisdom (not the fear of the Lord). When we know the whatever we send out comes back, we begin to be afraid of our own boomerangs.”
- “One of the most important passages in the 23rd Psalm is, ‘Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies.’ This means that even in the presence of the enemy situation, brought on by your doubts, fears or resentments, a way out is prepared for you.”
- “Ouspensky, in his book, ‘Tertium Organum,’ calls the 4th dimensional world, the ‘World of the Wondrous.’ He has figured out mathematically, that there is a realm where all conditions are perfect. Jesus Christ called it the Kingdom.”
- “This brings a picture of a long arm symbolizing strength and protection. With the realization of the power of the long arm of God, you would no longer resist or resent. You would relax and let go. The enemy thoughts within you would be destroyed, therefore, the adverse conditions would disappear.”
- “We are all now, back in the world of the wondrous, where anything can happen overnight, for when miracles do come, they come quickly! So let us become Miracle Conscious and prepare for miracles, expect miracles, and we are then inviting them into our lives. Maybe you need a financial miracle! There is a supply for every demand. Through active faith, the word and intuition, we release this invisible supply.”
- “When ye pray believe ye have it. When ye pray ACT as if you have already received.”
- “Your judgement day comes, they say, in sevens – seven hours, seven days, seven weeks, seven months, or seven years. It might even come in seven minutes. Then you pay some Karmic debt; the price for having violated spiritual law”
- “The material attitude towards money is to trust in your salary, your income and investments, which can shrink over night. The spiritual attitude toward money is to trust in God for your supply. To keep your possessions, always realize that they are God in manifestation.”
Thoughts and Manifestation
- “All going forward comes from desire. Science today, is going back to Lamarck and his ‘wishing theory.’ He claims that birds do not fly because they have wings, but they have wings because they wanted to fly; result of the ‘push of the emotional wish.’”
- “Expectancy is the substance of the things hoped for, or expectancy is the substance of the thing man fears. ‘The thing I expected has come upon me.’”
- “Sooner or later, you reap the fruits of your words and thoughts. ‘Words are bodies or forces which move spirally and return in due season to cross the lives of their creators.’ People who are always talking lack and limitation, reap lack and limitation.”
- “The Imaging faculty is the creative faculty, ‘Out of the imaginations of the heart come the issues of life.’ We have all a bank we can draw upon, the Bank of the Imagination. Let us imagine ourselves rich, well and happy. Imagine all our affairs in divine order, but leave the way of fulfillment to Infinite Intelligence.”
- “Think of the irresistible power of thought with clear vision. Many people are in a fog most of the time, making wrong decisions and going the wrong way.”
- “Whatever you feel deeply is impressed upon the subconscious, and manifests in your affairs. If you are convinced that you are a failure, you will be a failure, until you impress the subconscious with the conviction you are a success. This is done by making an affirmation which ‘clicks.’”
- “You combine with what you vibrate to, so let us all now vibrate to success, happiness and abundance.”
- “Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp is the out-picturing of the Word. Aladdin rubbed the lamp and all his desires came to pass. Your word is your lamp. Words and thoughts are a form of radio activity and do not return void. A scientist has said that words are clothed in light. You are continually reaping the fruits of your words.”
- “In desiring sincerely (without anxiety), we are catching up with the thing desired and the desire becomes crystallized on the external.”
- “It is a good thing to say when you think of your past success, happiness or wealth. All loss comes from your own vain imaginings, fear of loss crept into your consciousness, you carried burdens and fought battles, you reasoned instead of sticking to the magic path of intuition.”
- “Never voice lack or limitation for ‘by your words you are condemned.’ You combine with what you notice, and if you are always noticing failure and hard times, you will combine with failure and hard times.”
- “So prepare for your ‘unforeseen good.’ Let every thought and every act express your unwavering faith. Every event in your life is a crystallized idea. Something you have invited through either fear or faith. Something you have prepared for.”
- “The reason it is necessary to make an affirmation is because repetition impresses the subconscious. You cannot control your thoughts at first, but you can control your words, and Jesus Christ said: By your words you are justified and by your words you are condemned. Every day, choose the right words; the right thoughts!”
- “When you make an affirmation of Truth, your wall of Jerico totters. I gave the following statement to a woman: The walls of lack and delay now crumble away, and I enter my Promised Land, under grace. She had a vivid picture of stepping over a fallen wall, and received the demonstration of her good, almost immediately.”
- “Working with spiritual law, we are bringing to pass that which already is. In the Universal Mind it is there as an idea, but is crystallized on the external, by a sincere desire. The idea of a bird was a perfect picture in divine mind, the fish caught the idea, and wished themselves into birds. Are your desires bringing you wings? We should all be bringing some seemingly impossible thing to pass.”
- “No man gives to himself but himself, and no man takes away from himself but himself. The ‘Game of Life’ is a game of solitaire; as you change, all conditions will change.”
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