Quotes from Orison Swett Marden

You have no more right to go about among your fellows with a vinegar expression an your face, radiating mental poison, spreading the germs of doubt, fear, discouragement and despondency among them, than you have to inflict bodily injuries on them.

Opportunity becomes invisible to those who are doing nothing, or looking somewhere else for it.

Why do we allow the mirage of to-morrow to keep our eyes from the beauties of to-day?

You must have birds in your heart, Madam, before you can find them in the bushes

It is not so much a question of how far you have traveled as which way you face. It is facing life the right way, with .the right spirit, that will push you forward.

The habit of thinking of ourselves as sublime, or having a lofty conception of our possibilities, of imagining ourselves as being commanded by the Almighty to do a great work on this earth, of thinking of ourselves as not only human but divine, gods in the making, because we are a product of Divinity, will help us wonderfully to grasp the higher meaning of life and do the thing worth while.

Genius unexecuted is no more genius than a bushel of acorns is a forest of oaks.

It is not the possession of money that constitutes wealth, that gives the highest satisfaction, and awakens the consciousness of noble achievement, the assurance that one is fulfilling his mission, and that he is reading aright the sealed message which the Creator placed in his hand at birth.

A ploughman on his legs is higher than a gentleman on his knees.

It is in our non-producing moments that negatives, such as fear, worry, anxiety, hatred, and jealously get in their destructive work.

Better a cheap coffin and a plain funeral after a useful, unselfish life, than a grand mausoleum after a loveless, selfish life.

He who follows two hares is sure to catch

Habit works powerfully for or against us. It is a good servant, but a tyrannical master. If

A fatal penalty awaits those who always look on the dark side of everything, who are always predicting evil and failure, who see only the seamy, disagreeable side of life. They draw upon themselves what they see, what they look for.

Real happiness comes from the cultivation, the development, of the highest that is in us.

You cannot look into a cradle and read the secret message traced by a divine hand and wrapped up in that bit of clay, and more than you can see the North Star in the magnetic needle. God has loaded the needle of that young life so it will point to the star which presides over poetry, art, law, medicine, or whatever your own pet calling is, until you have wasted years precious life, yet, when once free, the needle flies back to its own star.

Nature hates all botched and half-finished work, and will pronounce her curse upon it.

Laziness begins in cobwebs and ends in iron chains.

Don't try to justify yourself on the ground that somebody must do this kind of work. Let somebody, not yourself, take the responsibility ... Many a man has dwarfed his manhood, cramped his intellect, crushed his aspiration, blunted his finer sensibilities, in some mean, narrow occupation because there was money in it.

Worry clogs the brain and paralyzes the thought. A troubled brain can not think clearly, vigorously, locally.

The college diploma has no more power to hold the knowledge you have gained in college than a piece of tissue paper over a gas jet can hold the gas in the pipe.

No man ever climbed to success on another's back.

I've never found any elevators in life; I've had to climb to every place worth reaching. And now I think it over, I wish it so with everybody, for then no one would rise any higher than he deserves to go. I

Fun is the cheapest and best medicine in the world for your children as well as for yourself. Give it to them in good large doses. It will not only save you doctors' bills, but it will also help to make your children happier, and will improve their chances in life.