Orison Swett Marden Biography | Inspiration Quotations | Motivation Quotes

Orison Swett Marden Motivational Quotations:

• “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.”

•  “Don't wait for extraordinary opportunities. Seize common occasions and make them great. Weak men wait for opportunities; strong men make them.”

• “No man can hope to accomplish anything great in this world until he throws his whole soul, flings the force of his whole life, into it. It is not enough simply to have a general desire to accomplish something. There is but one way to do that; and that is, to try to be somebody with all the concentrated energy we can muster.”

•  “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 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.”

• “Obstacles will look large or small to you according to whether you are large or small.”

  

• “A woman who is self-reliant, positive, optimistic, and undertakes her work with the assurance of success magnetizes her condition. She draws to herself the creative powers of the universe.”

•  “There is no medicine like hope, no incentive so great, and no tonic so powerful as expectation of something tomorrow.”

•  “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.”

• “It is what we do easily and what we like to do that we do well.”

•  “There can be no life which does not contain something to be grateful for, and the habit of gratitude is one of the most powerful assets of success and happiness which can be named.”

•  “There is genius in persistence. It conquers all opposers. It gives confidence. It annihilates obstacles. Everybody believes in a determined man. People know that when he undertakes a thing, the battle is half won, for his rule is to accomplish whatever he sets out to do.”

•  “Your expectationsn 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.”

• “What keeps so many people back is simply unwillingness to pay the price, to make the exertion, the effort to sacrifice their ease and comfort.”

• “We lift ourselves by our own thought; we climb upon our vision of ourselves.”

•  “Most men fail, not through lack of education, but from lack of dogged determination, from lack of dauntless will.”

•  “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!”

•  “The golden rule for every business man is this: 'Put yourself in your customer's place.'”

•  “Conquer yourself and you can conquer everything else.”

•  “Worry clogs the brain and paralyzes the thought. A troubled brain cannot think clearly, vigorously, locally.”

•  “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.”

•  “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.”

•  “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.”

• “You will always have to live with yourself, and it is to your best interest to see that you have good company - a clean, pure, straight, honest, upright, generous, magnanimous companion.”

•  “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.”

•  “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.”

•  “Learn From Yesterday, Live for Today, hope for tomorrow.”

•  “When you finish a thing you ought to be able to say to yourself: 'There, I am willing to stand for that piece of work. It is not pretty well done; it is done as well as I can do it; done to a complete finish. I will stand for that. I am willing to be judged by it.'”

•  “Believe with all your heart that you will do what you were made to do.” “It is the youth who sees a great opportunity hidden in just these simple services, who sees a very uncommon situation, a humble position, who gets on in the world.”

• “If you want to enlarge your life, you must first enlarge your thought of it and of yourself.”

•  “Joyfulness keeps the heart and face young. A good laugh makes us better friends with ourselves and everybody around us.”

•  “Wanted, a man who will not lose his individuality in a crowd, a man who has the courage of his convictions, who is not afraid to say "No," though all the world say "Yes.”

•  “Anybody can work when everything goes smoothly, when there is nothing to trouble him; but a man must be made of the right kind of stuff who can rise above the things which harass and handicap the weak, and do his work in spite of them. Indeed, this is the test of greatness.”

•  “The beginning of a habit is like an invisible thread, but every time we repeat the act we strengthen the strand, add to it another filament, until it becomes a great cable and binds us irrevocably thought and act.”

•  “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.”

•  “Work, love and play are the great balance wheels of man's being.”

•  “When a man feels throbbing within him the power to do what he undertakes as well as it can possibly be done, this is happiness, this is success.”

•  “Whatever comes to us in life we create first in our mentality. As the building is a reality in all its details in the architects mind before a stone or brick is laid, so we create mentally everything which later becomes a reality in our achievement.”

•  “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.”

•  “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 conquerable will. There is no failure for the man who gets up every time he falls, who rebounds like a rubber ball, who persists when everyone else gives up, who pushes on when everyone else turns back.”

•  “The best books are those which lift us to a higher plane where we breathe a purer atmosphere.”

•  “The giants of the race have been men of concentration, who have struck sledge-hammer blows in one place until they have accomplished their purpose. The successful men of today are men of one overmastering idea, one unwavering aim, men of single and intense purpose.”

•  “People who have accomplished work worthwhile have had a very high sense of the way to do things. They have not been content with mediocrity. They have not confined themselves to the beaten tracks; they have never been satisfied to do things just as others so them, but always a little better. They always pushed things that came to their hands a little higher up, this little farther on, that counts in the quality of life's work. It is constant effort to be first-class in everything one attempts that conquers the heights of excellence.”

•  “Our thoughts and imagination are the only real limits to our possibilities.”

• “Man becomes a slave to his constantly repeated acts. What he at first chooses, at last compels.”

• “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.”

• “The Creator has not given you a longing to do that which you have no ability to do.”

• “Absorb knowledge from every possible source and opportunity. Power gravitates to the man who knows how and why.”

• “What are stumbling blocks and defeat to the weak and vacillating are but stepping stones to victory to the determined soul.”

• “Real happiness is so simple that most people do not recognize it. It is derived from the simplest, the quietest, the most unpretentious things in the world.”

• “We win half the battle when we make up our minds to take the world as we find it including the thorns.”

• “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.”

• “All men who have achieved great things have been great dreamers.”

• “We cannot rise higher than our thought of ourselves.”

• “Most of our obstacles would melt away if, instead of cowering before them, we should make up our minds to walk boldly through them.”

• “We fail to see that we can control our destiny; make ourselves do whatever is possible; make ourselves become whatever we long to be.”