Orison Swett Marden Quotes - Page 4

People do not realise the immense value of utilising spare minutes.

The sculptor will chip off all unnecessary material to set free the angel. Nature will chip and pound us remorselessly to bring out our possibilities. She will strip us of wealth, humble our pride, humiliate our ambition, let us down from the ladder of fame, will discipline us in a thousand ways, if she can develop a little character. Everything must give way to that. Wealth is nothing, position is nothing, fame is nothing, manhood is everything.

The secret of happiness is in a cheerful, contented mind. He is poor who is dissatisfied; he is rich who is contented with what he has, and can enjoy what others own.

You will find the whole world will change to you when you change your attitude toward it.

A woman who is self-reliant, positive, optimistic, and undertakes her work with the assurance of success magnetizes her condition. She draws to herself the creative powers of the universe.

A strong, successful man is not the victim of his environment. He creates favorable conditions. His own inherent force and energy compel things to turn out as he desires.

The giants of the race have been men of concentration, who have struck sledge-hammer blows in one place until they have accomplished their purpose. The successful men of today are men of one overmastering idea, one unwavering aim, men of single and intense purpose.

There can be no great courage where there is no confidence or assurance, and half the battle is in the conviction that we can do what we undertake.

Every great man has become great, every successful man has succeeded, in proportion as he has confined his powers to one particular channel.

Unless you have prepared yourself to profit by your chance, the opportunity will only make you ridiculous. A great occasion is valuable to you just in proportion as you have educated yourself to make use of it.

When a man feels throbbing within him the power to do what he undertakes as well as it can possibly be done, this is happiness, this is success.

Good cheer is a great lubricant; it oils all of life's machinery.

Just make up your mind at the very outset that your work is going to stand for quality... that you are going to stamp a superior quality upon everything that goes out of your hands, that whatever you do shall bear the hallmark of excellence.

You cannot measure a man by his failures. You must know what use he makes of them. What did they mean to him. What did he get out of them.

Every experience in life, everything with which we have come in contact in life, is a chisel which has been cutting away at our life statue, molding, modifying, shaping it. We are part of all we have met. Everything we have seen, heard, felt or thought has had its hand in molding us, shaping us.

You must bring every particle of your energy, unanswerable resolution, your best efforts, your persistent industry to your task or the best will not come out of you. You must back up your ambition by your whole nature, by unbounded enthusiasm and a determination to win which knows no failure.

The quality of your work, in the long run, is the deciding factor on how much your services are valued by the world.

It is certain that the greatest poets, orators, statesmen, and historians, men of the most brilliant and imposing talents, have labored as hard, if not harder, than day laborers; and that the most obvious reason why they have been superior to other men is that they have taken more pains than other men.

No man is beaten until his hope is annihilated, his confidence gone, As long as a man faces life hopefully, confidently, triumphantly, he is not a failure; he is not beaten until he turns his back on life.

Pessimism has never done anything but tear down and destroy what optimism has built up.

The best thing about giving of ourselves is that what we get is always better than what we give. The reaction is greater than the action.

We lift ourselves by our thought, we climb upon our vision of ourselves. If you want to enlarge your life, you must first enlarge your thought of it and of yourself. Hold the ideal of yourself as you long to be, always, everywhere - your ideal of what you long to attain - the ideal of health, efficiency, success.

A constant struggle, a ceaseless battle to bring success from inhospitable surroundings, is the price of all great achievements.

Many mothers make the mistake of forever looking for the bad in the child, trying to . . . uproot and drive it out. This is like trying to eject the darkness from a room without opening the shutters and letting in the light. As John Newton said, 'I cannot sweep the darkness out, but I can shine it out.'

Real happiness is so simple that most people do not recognize it. It is derived from the simplest, the quietest, the most unpretentious things in the world.