Quotes from Orison Swett Marden

Many a man owes his advancement very largely to his ability to converse well. The ability to interest people in your conversation, to hold them, is a great power.

He has missed the finest lesson of culture and experience who has not learned how to enjoy without owning.

Our visions are the plans of the possible life structure, but they will end in plans if we do not follow them up with a vigorous effort to make them real, just as the architect's plans will end in his drawings if they are not followed up and made real by the builder.

There is not a single indication in man's wonderful mechanism that he was created for a life of poverty. There is something larger and grander for him in the divine plan than perpetual slavery to the bread-winning problem.

The most irresistible charm of youth is its bubbling enthusiasm. Youth sees no darkness ahead - no defile that has no outlet - it forgets that there is such a thing as failure in the world and believes that mankind has been waiting all these centuries for him to come and be the liberator of truth and energy and beauty.

The ability to cultivate friends is a powerful aid to success. It is capital which will stand by one when panics come, when banks fail, when business concerns go to the wall.

One of the secrets of a successful life is to be able to hold all of our energies upon one point, to focus all of the scattered rays of the mind upon one place or thing.

No matter where your lot may be cast, no power on earth can keep you from making a man of yourself, a superb character, a masterpiece.

If you would make the most of yourself, never picture yourself as anything different from what you would actually be, the man or woman you long to become.

There is an infinite difference between a little wrong and just right, between fairly good and the best, between mediocrity and superiority.

Concentrate . . . for the greatest achievements are reserved for the man of single aim, in whom no rival powers divide the empire of the soul.

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.

As long as a man faces life hopefully, confidently, triumphantly he is not a failure

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

The divine injunction to be perfect, even as He is perfect, was not given man to mock him. The possibility of our waking in His likeness is literally true.

One penny may seem to you a very insignificant thing, but it is the small seed from which fortunes spring.

Money, influence, and position are nothing compared with brains, principles, energy and perseverances.

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.

There is no stimulus like that which comes from the consciousness of knowing that others believe in us.

Analyzing what you haven't got as well as what you have is a necessary ingredient of a career.

Self-confidence carries conviction; it makes other people believe in us.

It is those who have this imperative demand for the best in their natures, and who will accept nothing short of it, that holds the banners of progress, that set the standards, the ideals, for others.

Believe with all your heart that you will do what you were made to do.

He can who thinks he can, and he can't who thinks he can't.