Quotes from Orison Swett Marden

No one has a corner on success. It is his who pays the price.

Nothing else so destroys the power to stand alone as the habit of leaning upon others. If you lean, you will never be strong or original. Stand alone or bury your ambition to be somebody in the world.

Many a man has finally succeeded only because he has failed after repeated efforts. If he had never met defeat he would never have known any great victory.

To many a man, and sometimes to a youth, there comes the opportunity to choose between honorable competence and tainted wealth. The young man who starts out to be poor and honorable, holds in his hand one of the strongest elements of success.

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.

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.

We make the world we live in and shape our own environment.

Unless you have prepared yourself to profit by your chance, the opportunity will only make you ridiculous. A great occasion is valuable to you just in proportion as you have educated yourself to make use of it.

No employer today is independent of those about him. He cannot succeed alone, no matter how great his ability or capital. Business today is more than ever a question of cooperation.

Your expectations 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.

The Universe is one great kindergarten for man. Everything that exists has brought with it its own peculiar lesson.

A will finds a way.

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!

Character is the indelible mark that determines the only true value of all people and all their work

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

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.

Superiority -- doing things a little better than anybody else can do them.

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

The greatest trouble with most of us is that our demands upon ourselves are so feeble, the call upon the great within of us so weak and intermittent that it makes no impression upon the creative energies; it lacks the force that transmutes desires into realities.

There are powers inside of you, if you could discover and use, would make of you everything you ever dreamed or imagined you could become.

This is the test of your manhood: How much is there left in you after you have lost everything outside of yourself?

Unless you are prepared yourself to profit by your chance, the opportunity will only make you ridiculous. A great occasion is valuable to you in proportion as you have educated yourself to make use of it.

We lift ourselves by our thought, we climb upon our vision of ourselves. If you want to enlarge your life, you must first enlarge your thought of it and of yourself. Hold the ideal of yourself as you long to be, always, everywhere - your ideal of what you long to attain - the ideal of health, efficiency, success.

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