Quotes by Orison Swett Marden

A constant struggle, a ceaseless battle to bring success from inhospitable surroundings, is the price of all great achievements.
– Orison Swett Marden
A good system shortens the road to the goal.
– Orison Swett Marden
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.
– Orison Swett Marden
All men who have achieved great things have been great dreamers.
– Orison Swett Marden
Analyzing what you haven't got as well as what you have is a necessary ingredient of a career.
– Orison Swett Marden
Be larger than your task.
– Orison Swett Marden
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!
– Orison Swett Marden
Deep within man dwell those slumbering powers; powers that would astonish him, that he never dreamed of possessing; forces that would revolutionize his life if aroused and put into action.
– Orison Swett Marden
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.
– Orison Swett Marden
Every youth owes it to himself and to the world to make the most possible out of the stuff that is in him.
– Orison Swett Marden
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.
– Orison Swett Marden
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.
– Orison Swett Marden
It is like the seed put in the soil - the more one sows, the greater the harvest.
– Orison Swett Marden
It is psychological law that whatever we desire to accomplish we must impress upon the subjective or subconscious mind.
– Orison Swett Marden
It is what we do easily and what we like to do that we do well.
– Orison Swett Marden
Joyfulness keeps the heart and face young. A good laugh makes us better friends with ourselves and everybody around us.
– Orison Swett Marden
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.
– Orison Swett Marden
Most of our obstacles would melt away if, instead of cowering before them, we should make up our minds to walk boldly through them.
– Orison Swett Marden
No employer today is independent of those about him. He cannot succeed alone, no matter how great his ability or capital. Business today is more than ever a question of cooperation.
– Orison Swett Marden
No man can be ideally successful until he has found his place. Like a locomotive he is strong on the track, but weak anywhere else.
– Orison Swett Marden
No man fails who does his best.
– Orison Swett Marden
No one has a corner on success. It is his who pays the price.
– Orison Swett Marden
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.
– Orison Swett Marden
Nothing else so destroys the power to stand alone as the habit of leaning upon others. If you lean, you will never be strong or original. Stand alone or bury your ambition to be somebody in the world.
– Orison Swett Marden
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.
– Orison Swett Marden
Our thoughts and imagination are the only real limits to our possibilities.
– Orison Swett Marden
Power gravitates to the man who knows how.
– Orison Swett Marden
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.
– Orison Swett Marden
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.
– Orison Swett Marden
The Creator has not given you a longing to do that which you have no ability to do.
– Orison Swett Marden
The golden rule for every business man is this: Put yourself in your customer's place.
– Orison Swett Marden
The influential man is the successful man, whether he be rich or poor.
– Orison Swett Marden
The man who has no money is poor, but one who has nothing but money is poorer. He only is rich who can enjoy without owning; he is poor who though he has millions is covetous.
– Orison Swett Marden
The quality of your work, in the long run, is the deciding factor on how much your services are valued by the world.
– Orison Swett Marden
The Universe is one great kindergarten for man. Everything that exists has brought with it its own peculiar lesson.
– Orison Swett Marden
The waste of life occasioned by trying to do too many things at once is appalling.
– Orison Swett Marden
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.
– Orison Swett Marden
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.
– Orison Swett Marden
There is an infinite difference between a little wrong and just right, between fairly good and the best, between mediocrity and superiority.
– Orison Swett Marden
There is no investment you can make which will pay you so well as the effort to scatter sunshine and good cheer through your establishment.
– Orison Swett Marden
There is no stimulus like that which comes from the consciousness of knowing that others believe in us.
– Orison Swett Marden
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.
– Orison Swett Marden
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.
– Orison Swett Marden
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.
– Orison Swett Marden
We advance on our journey only when we face our goal, when we are confident and believe we are going to win out.
– Orison Swett Marden
We fail to see that we can control our own destiny; make ourselves do whatever is possible; make ourselves become whatever we long to be.
– Orison Swett Marden
We make the world we live in and shape our own environment.
– Orison Swett Marden
We must give more in order to get more. It is the generous giving of ourselves that produces the generous harvest.
– Orison Swett Marden
What keeps so many employers back is simple unwillingness to pay the price, to make the exertion, the effort to sacrifice their ease and comfort.
– Orison Swett Marden
What power can poverty have over a home where loving hearts are beating with a consciousness of untold riches of the head and heart?
– Orison Swett Marden
Wisdom is knowledge which has become a part of one's being.
– Orison Swett Marden
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.
– Orison Swett Marden
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.
– Orison Swett Marden
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.
– Orison Swett Marden
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.
– Orison Swett Marden
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.
– Orison Swett Marden
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.
– Orison Swett Marden
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.
– Orison Swett Marden
Character is the indelible mark that determines the only true value of all people and all their work.
– Orison Swett Marden
Don't wait for extraordinary opportunities. Seize common occasions and make them great. Weak men wait for opportunities; strong men make them.
– Orison Swett Marden
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.
– Orison Swett Marden
Our trials, our sorrows, and our grieves develop us.
– Orison Swett Marden
Put the uncommon effort into the common task... make it large by doing it in a great way.
– Orison Swett Marden
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.
– Orison Swett Marden
The hand cannot reach higher than does the heart.
– Orison Swett Marden
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.
– Orison Swett Marden
The size of your accomplishments, the quality of your achievement, will depend very largely on how big a man you see in yourself, what sort of image you get of your possible self, yourself at your best.
– Orison Swett Marden
There is no medicine like hope, no incentive so great, and no tonic so powerful as expectation of something better tomorrow.
– Orison Swett Marden
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.
– Orison Swett Marden
It is just the little touches after the average man would quit that make the master's fame.
– Orison Swett Marden
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.
– Orison Swett Marden
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.
– Orison Swett Marden
The greatest thing a man can 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.
– Orison Swett Marden
Success is the child of drudgery and perseverance. It cannot be coaxed or bribed pay the price and it is yours.
– Orison Swett Marden