Orison Swett Marden Quotes - Page 2

Anybody can work when everything goes smoothly, when there is nothing to trouble him; but a man must be made of the right kind of stuff who can rise above the things which harass and handicap the weak, and do his work in spite of them. Indeed, this is the test of greatness.

Success is in the student, not in the university; greatness is in the individual, not in the library; power is in the man, not in his crutches. A great man will make opportunities, even out of the commonest and meanest situations. If a man is not superior to his education, is not larger than his crutches or his helps, if he is not greater than the means of his culture, which are but the sign-boards pointing the way to success, he will never reach greatness. Not learning, not culture alone, not helps and opportunities, but personal power and sterling integrity, make a man great.

We must give more in order to get more. It is the generous giving of ourselves that produces the generous harvest.

Our destiny changes with our thought; we shall become what we wish to become, do what we wish to do, when our habitual thought corresponds with our desire.

Our thoughts and imaginations are the only real limits to our possibilities.

Find your purpose and fling your life out to it. Find a way or make one. Try with all your might. Self-made or never made.

Your expectations opens or closes the doors of your supply, If you expect grand things, and work honestly for them, they will come to you, your supply will correspond with your expectation.

Obstacles are like wild animals. They are cowards but they will bluff you if they can. If they see you are afraid of them... they are liable to spring upon you; but if you look them squarely in the eye, they will slink out of sight.

The golden rule for every business man is this: 'Put yourself in your customer's place.'

Believe with all your heart that you will do what you were made to do.

The best books are those which lift us to a higher plane where we breathe a purer atmosphere.

Whatever comes to us in life we create first in our mentality. As the building is a reality in all its details in the architects mind before a stone or brick is laid, so we create mentally everything which later becomes a reality in our achievement.

No one has a corner on success. It is his who pays the price.

Most of our obstacles would melt away if, instead of cowering before them, we should make up our minds to walk boldly through them.

We win half the battle when we make up our minds to take the world as we find it including the thorns.

Wanted, a man who will not lose his individuality in a crowd, a man who has the courage of his convictions, who is not afraid to say "No," though all the world say "Yes.

Most men fail, not through lack of education or agreeable personal qualities, but from lack of dogged determination, from lack of dauntless will.

You will always have to live with yourself, and it is to your best interest to see that you have good company - a clean, pure, straight, honest, upright, generous, magnanimous companion.

We cannot rise higher than our thought of ourselves.

Worry clogs the brain and paralyzes the thought. A troubled brain can not think clearly, vigorously, locally.

When you finish a thing you ought to be able to say to yourself: 'There, I am willing to stand for that piece of work. It is not pretty well done; it is done as well as I can do it; done to a complete finish. I will stand for that. I am willing to be judged by it.'

No man can hope to accomplish anything great in this world until he throws his whole soul, flings the force of his whole life, into it. It is not enough simply to have a general desire to accomplish something. There is but one way to do that; and that is, to try to be somebody with all the concentrated energy we can muster.

It is what we do easily and what we like to do that we do well.

The man who has not learned the secret of taking the drudgery out of his task by flinging his whole soul into it, has not learned the first principles of success or happiness.

There is genius in persistence. It conquers all opposers. It gives confidence. It annihilates obstacles. Everybody believes in a determined man. People know that when he undertakes a thing, the battle is half won, for his rule is to accomplish whatever he sets out to do.