Orison Swett Marden Quotes

116 Sourced Quotes

Even the men most richly endowed with ability, education, and opportunity, even the giants of the race, after the completest life possible, feel, as they stand on the edge of the grave, that they are but human acorns with all their possibilities still in them, just beginning to sprout.

Orison Swett Marden
There is a legend that when God was equipping man for his long life journey of exploration, the attendant good angel was about to add the gift of contentment and complete satisfaction. The Creator stayed his hand and said, 'No, if you bestow that upon him you will rob him forever of all joy of self-discovery.'

Orison Swett Marden
What are stumbling blocks and defeat to the weak and vacillating are but stepping stones to victory to the determined soul.

Orison Swett Marden
Self-Control is the very essence of character. To be able to look a man straight in the eye, calmly and deliberately, without the slightest ruffle of temper under extreme provocation, gives a sense of power which nothing else can give. To feel that you are always, not sometimes, master of yourself, gives a dignity and strength to character, buttresses it, supports it on every side, as nothing else can. This is the culmination of thought mastery.

Orison Swett Marden
A man will remain a rag-picker as long as he has only the vision of a rag-picker.

Orison Swett Marden
No matter how humble your work may seem, do it in the spirit of an artist, of a master. In this way you lift it out of commonness and rob it of what would otherwise be drudgery.

Orison Swett Marden
Society is to the individual what the sun and showers are to the seed. It develops him, expands him, unfolds him, calls him out of himself. Other men are his opportunity. Each one is a match which ignites some new tinder in him unignitible by any previous match. Without these the sparks of individuality would sleep in him forever.

Orison Swett Marden
The wearer of smiles and the bearer of a kindly disposition needs no introduction, but is welcome anywhere.

Orison Swett Marden
The ability to talk well is to a man what cutting and polishing are to the rough diamond. The grinding does not add anything to the diamond. It merely reveals its wealth.

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

Orison Swett Marden
Every one who has labored honestly in the past has aided to place knowledge and comfort within the reach of a constantly increasing number.

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

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

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

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

Orison Swett Marden
Paradise is here or nowhere: you must take your joy with you or you will never find it.

Orison Swett Marden
Men are naturally lazy, and require some great stimulus to goad their flagging ambitions and enable them to overcome the inertia which comes from ease and the consciousness of inherited wealth. Whatever lessens in a young man the feeling that he must make his way in the world cripples his chance of success. Poverty has ever been the priceless spur that has goaded man up to his own loaf.

Orison Swett Marden
The moment man cuts himself off from living connection with the human race and its needs, he begins to die from poor circulation.

Orison Swett Marden
The greatest advantage of books does not always come from what we remember of them, but from their suggestiveness, their character-building power.

Orison Swett Marden
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.

Orison Swett Marden
Thrift means that you should always have the best you can possibly afford, when the thing has any reference to your physical and mental health, to your growth in efficiency and power.

Orison Swett Marden
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.

Orison Swett Marden
Dreams that are realized become an inspiration for new endeavor. It is in the power to make the dream good that we find the hope of this world.

Orison Swett Marden
Our thoughts are like roots which reach out in every direction into the cosmic ocean of formless energy, and these thought-roots set in motion vibrations like themselves and attract the affinities of our desires and ambitions.

Orison Swett Marden
Aspiration lifts the life; groveling lowers it. When we are striving for excellence in everything we do the entire life grows and expands, but if we allow our standards to drop, there is a natural progression that follows, a tendency for a downward effort in all that we do thereafter.

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