Orison Swett Marden Quotes
Obstacles are like wild animals, which are cowards but will bluff you if they can. If they see you are afraid of them, if stand and hesitate, if you take your eyes from theirs, they are liable to spring upon you ; but if you do not flinch, if you look them squarely in the eye, they will slink out of sight.
The Creator has not given you a longing to do that which you have no ability to do.
Don't wait for extraordinary opportunities. Seize common occasions and make them great. Weak men wait for opportunities; strong men make them.
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.
There can be no failure to a man who has not lost his courage, his character, his self respect, or his self-confidence. He is still a king.
If you are made of the stuff that wins, if you have grit and nerve in you, your misfortunes, losses, and defeats will call them out and make you all the stronger.
This is the test of your manhood: How much is there left in you after you have lost everything outside of yourself?
There are powers inside of you which, if you could discover and use, would make of you everything you ever dreamed or imagined you could become.
The golden opportunity you are seeking is in yourself. It is not in your environment, it is not in luck or chance, or the help of others; it is in yourself alone.
Begin where you are; work where you are; the hour, which you are now wasting, dreaming of some far off success, may be crowded with grand possibilities.
Difficulties flee before absolute fearlessness.
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.
Our thoughts and imagination are the only real limits to our possibilities.
Talk happiness. The world is sad enough without your woe.
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.
Instead of being the victims of fate, we can order our fate ; we can largely determine what it shall be. 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.
Achievement is not always success, while reputed failure often is. It is honest endeavor, persistent effort to do the best possible under any and all circumstances.
The man who does not learn, early in life, to focus his efforts, to centralize his power, will never achieve marked success in anything. The waste of life occasioned by trying to do too many things at once is appalling.
Many a man has finally succeeded only because he has failed after repeated efforts. If he had never met defeat he would never have known any great victory.
Resolve that whatever you do, you will bring the whole man to it; that you will fling the whole weight of your being into it.
There is no stimulus like that which comes from the consciousness of knowing that others believe in us.
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.
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.
All men who have achieved great things have been great dreamers.
There is only one thing for us to do, and that is to do our level best right where we are every day of our lives. To use our best judgment, and then to trust the rest to that Power which holds the forces of the universe in his hands.
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.
Nature has fitted each creature for its proper task, and man is ridiculous when he tries to reverse her laws.
Success is not measured by what you accomplish, but by the opposition you have encountered, and the courage with which you have maintained the struggle against overwhelming odds.
You cannot rise out of your present condition until you believe you can. The limit of your thought will be the limit of your possibilities. Your limited ideal ofyourself will limit your execution. You will never get any higher than your vision and your faith in that vision.
Variant:
We cannot rise higher than our thought of ourselves.
The universe is one great kindergarten for man. Everything that exists has brought with it its own peculiar lesson.
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.
Success is the child of drudgery and perseverance. It cannot be coaxed or bribed; pay the price and it is yours.
You have not found your place until all your faculties are roused, and your whole nature consents and approves of the work you are doing.
No man fails who does his best.
Existence without an aim, without a worthy purpose, is worse than wasted. We are put on this planet to do something, and whoever refuses to pay the price for growth in active effort to accomplish something worthy of life, must pay the penalty in deterioration.
The greatest thing a man can possibly do in this world is to make the most possible out of the stuff that has been given him. This is success, and there is no other.
But how shall I get ideas? ''Keep your wits open! Observe! Observe! Study! Study! But above all, Think! Think! And when a noble image is indelibly impressed upon the mind - Act!
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 unconquerable will. There is no failure for the man who gets up every time he falls, who rebounds like a rubber ball, who persists when every one else gives up, who pushes on when every one else turns back.
Work, love and play are the great balance wheels of man's being.
All who have accomplished great things have had a great aim, have fixed their gaze on a goal which was high, one which sometimes seemed impossible.
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.
Opportunity is coy, is swift, is gone, before the slow, the unobservant, the indolent, or the careless can seize her.
