Orison Swett Marden
There is no medicine like hope.Collection: Hope
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.Collection: Failure
We cannot separate our lives from time. Why is it that we are so extravagant, so thoughtless, in our waste of time, especially in youth, when we cling so tenaciously to life? You cannot separate a wasted hour from the same duration of your life. If you waste your time, you must waste your life. If you improve your time, you cannot help improving your life.Collection: Time
Laughter brightens the eye, increases the perspiration, expands the chest, forces the poisoned air from the least-used cells, and tends to restore that exquisite poise or balance which we call health.Collection: Laughter
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.Collection: Children
The successful men of today are men of one overmastering idea, one unwavering aim, men of single and intense purpose.Collection: Successful
Every youth owes it to himself and to the world to make the most possible out of the stuff that is in him.Collection: Time
The hopeful man sees success where others see failure, sunshine where others see shadows and storm.Collection: Success
Ambition is the incentive that makes purpose GREAT and ACHIEVEMENT greater!Collection: Inspiring
The lack of opportunity is ever the excuse of the weak.Collection: Opportunity
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.Collection: Ideas
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.Collection: Inspirational
Concentrate . . . for the greatest achievements are reserved for the man of single aim, in whom no rival powers divide the empire of the soul.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Being Strong
Without continuous effort there cannot be continuous achievement.Collection: Achievement
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.Collection: Being Happy
There's no grander sight in the world than that of a person fired with a great purpose, dominated by one unwavering aim.Collection: Sight
No one should voluntarily remain in an environment which prevents his development.Collection: Development
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.Collection: Happiness
The wearer of smiles and the bearer of a kindly disposition needs no introduction, but is welcome anywhere.Collection: Needs
What we do for a living does not matter as much as how we do it.Collection: Work
What power can poverty have over a home where loving hearts are beating with a consciousness of untold riches of the head and heart?Collection: Home
There is no law by which one can, as long as he thinks he can't.Collection: Thinking
Opportunity always looks bigger going than coming.Collection: Opportunity
Whatever our creed, we feel that no good deed can by any possibility go unrewarded, no evil deed unpunished.Collection: Evil
There is a legend of an artist who long sought for a piece of sandalwood, out of which to carve a Madonna. He was about to give up in despair, leaving the vision of his life unrealized, when in a dream he was bidden to carve his Madonna from a block of oak wood which was destined for the fire. He obeyed and produced a masterpiece from a log of common firewood. Many of us lose great opportunities in life by waiting to find sandalwood for our carvings, when they really lie hidden in the common logs that we burn.Collection: Dream
The waste of life occasioned by trying to do too many things at once is appalling.Collection: Life
The moment man cuts himself off from living connection with the human race and its needs, he begins to die from poor circulation.Collection: Cutting
Great men are but common men more fully developed and ripened.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Opportunity
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.Collection: Opportunity
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.Collection: Ocean
Life is not mean, it is grand; if it is mean to any, he or she makes it so. God made it glorious. It is paved with diamonds; its banks he fringed with flowers. He overarched it with stars. Around it He spread the glory of the physical universe-suns, moon, worlds, constellations, systems-all that is magnificent in motion, sublime in magnitude, and grand in order and obedience. God would not have attended life with this broad march of grandeur if it did not mean something.Collection: Life
The mill cannot grind with the water that has passed.Collection: Water
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.Collection: Wall
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.Collection: Excellence
Every thought which enters the mind, every word we utter, every deed we perform, makes its impression upon the inmost fiber of our being and the result of these impressions is our character. The study of books, of music, or of the fine arts is not essential to a lofty character. It rests with the worker whether a rude piece of marble shall be squared into a horse-block or carved into an Apollo, a Psyche, or a Venus di Milo. It is yours, if you choose, to develop a spiritual form more beautiful than any of these, instinct with immortal life, refulgent with all the glory of character.Collection: Beautiful
A man will remain a rag-picker as long as he has only the vision of a rag-picker.Collection: Men
Self-confidence carries conviction; it makes other people believe in us.Collection: Motivational
There is an infinite difference between a little wrong and just right, between fairly good and the best, between mediocrity and superiority.Collection: Differences
Fear is a great robber of power. It paralyzes the thinking faculties, ruins spontaneity, enthusiasm, and self confidence. It has a blighting effect upon all one's thoughts, moods, and efforts. It destroys ambition and efficiency.Collection: Motivational
Doing common things uncommonly well.Collection: Excellence
They may well fear fate who have any infirmity of habit or aim: but they who rest on what is have a destiny beyond destiny, and can make mouths of fortune.Collection: Fate
Character: the grandest thing in the world.Collection: Character
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.Collection: Commitment
Let your air be that of a winner, a man who is resolved to make his way in the world, to make himself stand for something.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Effort
Obstacles will look large or small to you according to whether you are large or small.Collection: Challenges
This is the test of your manhood: How much is there left in you after you have lost everything outside of yourself?Collection: Men