First published in 1898, The Power of Silence is Dresser's first book on improving one's life through understanding the work of Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, the founder of the 19th-century "New Age" philosophy of New Thought. He explains the eternal principle that is Reality, the total of the universe, its own manifestation that is wholly Nature.

Dresser then brings humans into this scheme and seeks to answer some of the largest questions in human existence, including the reason for suffering. Spiritual seekers will be inspired by Dresser's presentation of an orderly and eternal universe that is both rational and religiously inspired.


American New Thought author HORATIO WILLIS DRESSER (1866-1954) wrote a number of books about mental health and spirituality including The Perfect Whole (1896) and In Search of a Soul (1897). Later in life, he left the New Thought movement and went to work at Harvard University, where he wrote about philosophy. Because of this abandonment of his earlier work, his writings are often forgotten today.