"The vision that you glorify in your mind, the ideal that you enthrone in your heart - this you will build your life by, and this you will become"
About this Quote
The intent is overtly motivational, but the subtext is more demanding than a poster-friendly aphorism. Allen isn’t arguing that thoughts affect mood; he’s insisting they confer destiny. The phrasing nudges the reader toward moral accountability for their inner catalog: your visions are not harmless daydreams, they’re blueprints. That’s empowering in the American self-making tradition, and also quietly coercive. If you end up small, compromised, or stuck, the logic implies you enthroned the wrong thing. It’s a spiritualized version of personal branding: curate the ideal, commit to it, become it.
Context matters. Allen writes at the turn of the 20th century, when Protestant self-discipline, New Thought optimism, and an industrializing culture hungry for upward mobility all feed a faith in self-authorship. His language borrows the cadence of sermon and the confidence of the era’s success literature. Yet there’s a tension: life is not a solo construction project. The quote’s elegance is its gamble - it compresses messy social forces into a single, flattering proposition: the sovereign self can outvote circumstance, if only it can govern its own imagination.
Quote Details
| Topic | Self-Improvement |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Allen, James Lane. (2026, January 16). The vision that you glorify in your mind, the ideal that you enthrone in your heart - this you will build your life by, and this you will become. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-vision-that-you-glorify-in-your-mind-the-112248/
Chicago Style
Allen, James Lane. "The vision that you glorify in your mind, the ideal that you enthrone in your heart - this you will build your life by, and this you will become." FixQuotes. January 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-vision-that-you-glorify-in-your-mind-the-112248/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"The vision that you glorify in your mind, the ideal that you enthrone in your heart - this you will build your life by, and this you will become." FixQuotes, 16 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-vision-that-you-glorify-in-your-mind-the-112248/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.








