Quotes from Orison Swett Marden

No matter what your work is, says Emerson, let it be yours; no matter if you are a tinker or preacher, blacksmith or president, let what you are doing be organic, let it be in your bones, and you open the door by which the affluence of heaven and earth shall stream into you.

Reading is to the mind, says Addison, what exercise is to the body. As by the one health is preserved, strengthened and invigorated, by the other, virtue (which is the health of the mind) is kept alive, cherished and confirmed.

The more you know of your own line of work, by so much do you set yourself a little apart from a hundred of your competitors who are content to let well enough alone.

You will never get any higher than your vision and your faith in that vision.

Columbus was carried back to Spain in chains, and a pickle dealer of Seville, who never rose above the position of mate of a schooner, gave his name to the world Columbus had discovered.

The greatest thing a man can possibly do in this world is to make the most possible out of the stuff that has been given him. This is success, and there is no other. It

Your highest ideal, the vision of your life work which you long to make real, is your best friend. Keep as close to it as you can, stick to it, and it will lead you to your goal.

It is the ship at the wharf, not the ship at sea, that rots fastest;—the

It is the ship at the wharf, not the ship at sea, that rots fastest;—the still pool, not the running brook, that stagnates.

The very habit of expecting that the future is full of good things for you, that you are going to be prosperous and happy, that you are going to have a fine family, a beautiful home, and are going to stand for something, is the best kind of capital with which to start life.

Gulliver was a giant whom the dwarfs captured while he was napping by binding him with tiny threads. Each thread was a trifle which he could easily have snapped by itself. But he didn't wake, and the dwarfs wound the thread around him in such number that at last he found himself a prisoner.

Never for an instant admit that you are sick, weak, or ill unless you wish to experience these conditions, for the very thinking of them helps them to get a stronger hold upon you.

Build slow and sure; 'tis for life, young man. In the elder days of art, Builders wrought with greatest care Each minute and unseen part, For the gods see everywhere. — Longfellow.

Mr. Arthur Brisbane says: One thing above all brings success—to like your work and to be interested in it; and not to like your work is the one thing above all others that brings failure.

Every time we do wrong, every time we depart from the truth, every time we commit a dishonest, unworthy act, do a mean, contemptible thing, we lessen the Omnipotent grip upon us, and then we become a prey to all sorts of fears, apprehensions, dreads, and doubts.

Lo que importa no es tanto lo que haces con tus manos como lo que haces con tu mente. Todo lo que se ha logrado por la mano o el cerebro del hombre, nació en la mente.

We cannot long keep from the face that which habitually lives in our minds.

We believe in a man in proportion to his immovableness from principle, the fixity of his faith in his mission. The man who is loosely attached to his life work, who can be easily turned aside from his life purpose, is not much of a man.

Perhaps the most valuable result of all education, it was said by Professor Huxley, is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson which ought to be learned, and, however early a man's training begins, it is probably the last lesson which he learns thoroughly.

No matter how strongly and perfectly constructed, or how powerful a locomotive may be, unless the water is heated to 212 degrees, the train will not move an inch. Warm water, water even at the boiling point, will not answer.

The blowing winds are but our servants When we hoist a sail.

Lincoln said that "folks are usually about as happy as they make up their minds to be.

everything is tinted, modified, shaped by what we bring to it by our mentality. If we bring beauty to it, we find that it is beautiful. If we bring an ugly mental attitude to it, it is ugly and disappointing.

We first build our castles in our consciousness, picture them in detail in our ambition, before we put foundations under them and reality into them. Dreaming is not always castle-building. Every real castle, every home, every building was an air castle first.