Orison Swett Marden Quotes

Success is the child of drudgery and perseverance. It cannot be coaxed or bribed; pay the price and it is yours.

There never will be a trust in excellence or a combination in superiority. As long as you can do a thing a little better than anybody else can do it, you need no bond or trade-mark to protect the product of your brains.

There is no failure for the man who realizes his power, who never knows when he is beaten; there is no failure for the determined endeavor, the conquerable will. There is no failure for the man who gets up every time he falls, who rebounds like a rubber ball, who persists when everyone else gives up, who pushes on when everyone else turns back.

A lobster, when left high and dry among the rock, does not have the sense enough to work his way back to the sea, but waits for the sea to come to him. If it does not come, he remains where he is and dies, although the slightest effort would enable him to reach the waves, which are perhaps within a yard of him. The world is full of human lobsters; people stranded on the rocks of indecision and procrastination, who, instead of putting forth their own energies, are waiting for some grand billow of good fortune to set them afloat.

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

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.'

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

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

Be larger than your task.

Opportunity is often missed because we are broadcasting when we should be tuning in

We can give our smiles, our encouragement, our sympathy to someone who needs them every day of the year.

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.

It is those who have this imperative demand for the best in their natures, and who will accept nothing short of it, that holds the banners of progress, that set the standards, the ideals, for others.

There is no stimulus like that which comes from the consciousness of knowing that others believe in us.

Your outlook upon life, your estimate of yourself, your estimate of your value are largely colored by your environment. Your whole career will be modified, shaped, molded by your surroundings, by the character of the people with whom you come in contact every day.

Play is as necessary to the perfect development of a child as sunshine is to the perfect development of a plant.

Wisdom is knowledge which has become a part of one's being.

One penny may seem to you a very insignificant thing, but it is the small seed from which fortunes spring.

Every germ of goodness will at last struggle into bloom and fruitage...true success follows every right step.

Who would have ever heard of Theodore Roosevelt outside of his immediate community if he had only half committed himself? The great secret of his career was that he has flung his whole life with all the determination and energy he could muster.

Keep fear out of your child's mind, as you would keep poison out of his body; for fear is the deadliest of mental poisons.

It is just the little touches after the average man would quit that make the master's fame.

The lack of opportunity is ever the excuse of a weak, vacillating mind. Opportunities! Every life is full of them. Every newspaper article is an opportunity. Every client is an opportunity. Every sermon is an opportunity. Every business transaction is an opportunity, an opportunity to be polite, an opportunity to be manly, an opportunity to be honest, an opportunity to make friends.

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

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

You know from past experiences that whenever you have been driven to the wall, or thought you were, you have extricated yourself in a way which you never would have dreamed possible had you not been put to the test. The trouble is that in your everyday life you don't go deep enough to tap the divine mind within you.

Obstacles will look large or small to you according to whether you are large or small.

You will never succeed while smarting under the drudgery of your occupation, if you are constantly haunted with the idea that you could succeed better in something else.

The Universe is one great kindergarten for man. Everything that exists has brought with it its own peculiar lesson. The mountain teaches stability and grandeur; the ocean immensity and change. Forests, lakes, and rivers, clouds and winds, stars and flowers, stupendous glaciers and crystal snowflakes, - every form of animate or inanimate existence, leaves its impress upon the soul of man. Even the bee and ant have brought their little lessons of industry and economy.

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

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.

This is the test of your manhood: How much is there left in you after you have lost everything outside of yourself?

No young man starting in life could have better capital than plenty of friends. They will strengthen his credit, support him in every great effort, and make him what, unaided, he could never be. Friends of the right sort will help him more - to be happy and successful - than much money.

If you do not feel yourself growing in your work and your life broadening and deepening, if your task is not a perpetual tonic to you, you have not found your place.

Live and let live is not enough; live and help live is not too much.

To many a man, and sometimes to a youth, there comes the opportunity to choose between honorable competence and tainted wealth. The young man who starts out to be poor and honorable, holds in his hand one of the strongest elements of success.

It is the youth who sees a great opportunity hidden in just these simple services, who sees a very uncommon situation, a humble position, who gets on in the world.

There is an infinite difference between a little wrong and just right, between fairly good and the best, between mediocrity and superiority.

The beginning of a habit is like an invisible thread, but every time we repeat the act we strengthen the strand, add to it another filament, until it becomes a great cable and binds us irrevocably thought and act.

When we are sure that we are on the right road there is no need to plan our journey too far ahead. No need to burden ourselves with doubts and fears as to the obstacles that may bar our progress. We cannot take more than one step at a time.

Something greater than wealth, grander even than fame — that manhood, character, stand for success, and that nothing else really does.

What we sincerely believe regarding ourselves is true for us.

Learn From Yesterday, Live for Today, hope for tomorrow.

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.

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.

The mill cannot grind with the water that has passed.

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.

To have done no man a wrong...to walk and live, unseduced, within arm's length of what is not your own, with nothing between your desire and its gratification but the invisible law of rectitude-this is to be a man.