Orison Swett Marden
American author and founder of Success magazine, 1850-1924
69 quotes.
Quotes by Orison Swett Marden
- A firm self-faith helps a man to project himself with a force that is almost irresistible.
- A good character is a precious thing, above rubies, gold, crowns, or kingdoms, and the work of making it is the noblest labor on earth.
- A self-controlled mind is a free mind, and freedom is power.
- Blaze your own way, make your own path, or you will never make any impression on the world.
- Call hope to your aid, and picture a bright, successful future.
- Character gravitates upward, as with a celestial gravitation, while mere genius, without character, gravitates downward.
- Difficulties are great or small in proportion as you are great or small.
- Don't wait for extraordinary opportunities. Seize common occasions and make them great. Weak men wait for opportunities; strong men make them.
- Endurance is a much better test of character than any one act of heroism, however noble.
- Every day is a little life; and our whole life but a day repeated.
- Existence is the privilege of effort, and when that privilege is met like a man, opportunities to succeed along the line of your aptitude will come faster than you can use them.
- Fear, in any of its expressions, like worry or anxiety, can not live an instant in your mind in the presence of the opposite thought, the image of courage, fearlessness, confidence, hope, self-assurance, self-reliance.
- Genius will falter by the side of labor, great powers will yield to great industry.
- Great tenacity of purpose is the only thing that will carry you over the hard places which appear in every career to ultimate triumph.
- Great things are never done under a sense of fear of some impending danger.
- Hard work, a definite aim, and faithfulness, will shorten the way.
- He can who thinks he can, and he can't who thinks he can't.
- If you want to enlarge your life, you must first enlarge your thought of it and of yourself.
- Man becomes a slave to his constantly repeated acts. What he at first chooses, at last compels.
- Man owes his growth chiefly to that active striving of the will, that encounter with difficulty, which we call effort; and it is astonishing to find how often results that seemed impracticable are thus made possible.
- Many of us imprison ourselves in the narrow limited poverty thought, and then, like caged eagles trying in vain to get free, we beat out our wings against the bars we have ourselves put up.
- Men with no assets but colossal faith in themselves have accomplished wonders, when capital without self-faith has failed.
- Most men fail, not through lack of education or agreeable personal qualities, but from lack of dogged determination, from lack of dauntless will.
- No matter how great the ability, how large the genius, or how splendid the education, the achievement will never rise higher than the confidence.
- No matter if you have lost your property, your health, your reputation even, there is always hope for the man who keeps a firm faith in himself and looks up.
- No matter what other people may think about your ability never allow yourself to doubt that you can do or become what you long to do or become.
- No one can pursue a worthy object steadily and persistently with all the powers of his mind, and yet make his life a failure.
- Not money, not position, but power is what we want; and character is greater than any occupation or profession.
- Nothing will destroy the confidence of others so quickly as a doubt in our own minds.
- Obstacles will look large or small to you according to whether you are large or small.
- One must have that determination which never looks back and which knows no defeat; that resolution which burns all bridges behind it and is willing to risk everything upon the effort.
- One talent with a will behind it will accomplish more than ten without it.
- Opportunity is often missed because we are broadcasting when we should be tuning in
- People who consult their moods, their preferences, or their ease never make a great success in life. It is the man who gets a firm grip on himself and forces himself to do the thing that will ultimately be best for him, who succeeds.
- Pure grit is that element of character which enables a man to clutch his aim with an iron grip, and keep the needle of his purpose pointing to the star of his hope.
- Put such a quality into your work that anyone who comes across anything you have ever done will see character in it, individuality in it, your trade-mark of superiority upon it.
- Remember, the main business of life is not to do, but to become; an action itself has its finest and most enduring fruit in character.
- Self-control is at the root of all the virtues. Let a man yield to his impulses and passions, and from that moment he gives up his moral freedom.
- Strength of character consists of two things,--power of will and power of self-restraint.
- The candle loses nothing of its light by lighting another candle.