Before starting to read always select logically written books which deal with vital subjects that will benefit your life. Read a little poetry every day. That will keep your feelings exercised. Read a little from modern physical science, study a little medical science and hygiene and add to these a little study of some book that will make you laugh. This will serve as a mental appetizer and will quicken the flow of your intellectual saliva.

Intellect can be developed by the habit of daily mental exercise in reading and thinking over certain logical philosophical statements. Finding out your own views, after you have read a good book, is of inestimable value in assimilating true ideas.

If you mix sand and sugar together it is difficult for a man to separate them while eating, but in a mixture of sugar and sand the ant always gets the sugar and leaves the sand alone.

The blind reader, who swallows good and bad ideas indiscriminately, suffers from intellectual indigestion, chaos, and mental irritation, whereas the introspective reader, like the ant, separates the erroneous harmful or too sentimental views from beneficial and right expressions in the books he reads.

So select quality in the books you read, and above all discriminate and examine the salient statements in them as you read. Remember you are not a mental machine of recording others’ ideas. Assimilate only the worthy ideas in books.

Always seek to be worthy of the position just ahead of you. Use your will power and creative brain specially to create new success. Most of us follow the beaten track. It is the new energetic explorer on the pathway of success who succeeds.

If you read fifteen minutes, write twenty minutes, introspect thirty minutes and meditate thirty-five, you will be spending your time according to the grades of importance of your work.

Eating three meals a day is an extremely dangerous habit. Many are being led to their graves quickly because they eat at the sound of the dinner bell. Ignore its ominous call if you are not hungry. It is good to eat at a regular time, for a psychological expectancy is created in the body cells which helps the secretion of the digestive juices. The intelligent cells like hungry animals at the Zoo wait for the dinner hour. But never eat unless you are hungry. Eat moderately, if you are hungry. Eat less if you are a little hungry. Eat nothing if you are not hungry at all. Omit the meals which you may try to eat with little hunger and this will sharpen your hunger for the next meal. Use your will power to resist the temptation of eating three meals every day, by which the whole system, including the cells, the heart, the nerves, the stomach, has to work continuously. Give your intelligent machine occasional rest by cutting off breakfast, lunch or dinner every day. If you are very hungry and are working hard, you may safely eat three light meals daily, but if you don’t do much manual labor, then two meals a day are plenty.

One head of very finely chopped lettuce, two tablespoonfuls of finely ground pecans, three tablespoonfuls of cottage cheese, a pinch of salt, half a teaspoonful of sugar, juice of a quarter of an onion. Mix these ingredients and knead them as you would a lump of dough, then make them in the form of a cutlet and serve on a dish.