Quotes from Orison Swett Marden

The Gods we worship write their names on our faces." The face is carved from within by invisible tools; our thoughts, our moods, our emotions are the chisels.

We can have little faith in the youth who is always crying out against his condition, and telling an incredulous world what great things he could do if his lot were different.

We tend to get what we expect, and if we expect nothing we get nothing. The stream cannot rise higher than its fountainhead;

freely ye have received, freely give.

The trouble with us is that we try to find happiness where it does not exist, in transient, impermanent things; we try to find it in the gratification of desire; we seek it in animal pleasure. Happiness lives in giving, in doing, not in getting, in grasping.

We were made to dominate our environment. It was not intended that we should be buffeted about by accident or chance. Our greatest enemies live in our own brains, in our imaginations, in our wrong ideas of life. We were intended to be conquerors instead of slaves and there is no slavery like the slavery to a conviction or a superstition that makes us cowards.

There is a very close connection between a fine, strong, clean physique and a fine, strong, clean character. A man who allows himself to become careless in regard to the one will, in spite of himself, fall away in the other.

Small sands the mountain, moments make the year, And trifles, life. —Young. The smallest hair throws its shadow. —Goethe. He that despiseth small things shall fall little by little. —Ecclesiastes. It is the little rift within the lute, That by and by will make the music mute, And ever widening slowly silence all. —Tennyson. A pebble in the streamlet scant Has turned the course of many a river: A dewdrop on the baby plant Has warped the giant oak forever.

Want has been the great schoolmaster of the race: necessity has been the mother of all great inventions.

Shakespeare says: God has given you one face and you make yourselves another.

It is the close observation of little things which is the secret of success in business, in art, in science, and in every pursuit of life. —Smiles.

like trying to eject the darkness from a room without opening the shutters and letting in the light. "I cannot sweep the darkness out, but I can shine it out," said John Newton.

We can so educate the will power that it will focus the thoughts upon the bright side of things, and upon objects which elevate the soul, thus forming a habit of happiness and goodness which will enrich the whole life. The habit of making the best of everything and of always looking on the bright side is a fortune in itself.

We cannot get away from the fact that it is impossible for us to be very different from our convictions. It is hard for a physician to keep a patient alive who believes he is going to die and that nothing can save him. The bodily conditions follow his faith.

no man will ever be willing to live a half-life when he has once seen that it is a half-life.

You, young man, make up your mind at the very outset of your career that whatever comes to you in life, that whether you succeed or fail, whether you have this or that, there is one thing you will have, and that is a happy, contented mind, that you will extract your happiness as you go along.

STICK. Patience is the courage of the conqueror; it is the virtue, par excellence, of Man against Destiny, of the One against the World, and of the Soul against Matter.

To bear is to conquer fate. —Campbell.

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

Persevering mediocrity is much more respectable, and unspeakably more useful, than talented inconstancy. — J. Hamilton.

The first duty we owe a child is to teach him to fling out his inborn gladness and joy with the same freedom and abandon as the bobolink does when it makes the meadow joyous with its song. Suppression of the fun-loving nature of a child means the suppression of its mental and moral faculties. Joy will go out of the heart of a child after a while if he is continually suppressed.

Don't run about and tell acquaintances that you have been unfortunate; people do not like to have unfortunate men for acquaintances.

There are three kinds of people in the world, says a recent writer, the wills, the won'ts, and the can'ts. The first accomplish everything; the second oppose everything; the third fail in everything.

Weak men wait for opportunities, strong men make them.