Text of the meditation
Money wasted can be restored; health wasted can be restored; but time wasted can never be restored. The person who gets up early in order to think and plan, that they may weigh and consider and forecast, will always show greater skill and success in their particular pursuit than the person who lies in bed till the last moment, and gets up only in time to begin breakfast.
An hour spent in this way before breakfast will prove of the greatest value in making one's efforts fruitful. It is a means of calming and clarifying the mind, and of focusing one's energies so as to make them more powerful and effective. The best and most abiding success is that which is made before eight o'clock in the morning.
The one who is at their business at six o'clock will always, all other conditions being equal, be a long way ahead of the one who is in bed at eight. The day is not lengthened for anyone.
James Allen (1864–1912), Book of Meditations for Every Day in the Year (1913) – public-domain text, gently modernised.
The original 1913 text is in the public domain.
