Orison Swett Marden Quotes

“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.”

“A good laugh makes us better friends with ourselves and everyone around us.”

“A man should be so much greater than any material failure that can come to him that it would scarcely be mentioned in his biography, and that it would be regarded as a mere incident in his career — inconvenient, but not very important.”

“A man will remain a rag picker as long as he has only a rag picker’s vision.”

“A will finds a way.”

“A woman who is self-reliant, positive, optimistic, and undertakes her work with the assurance of success magnetizes her condition. She draws to herself the creative powers of the universe.”

“About as poor business as one can engage in is that of going through life with one's eyes so fixed upon what others have, that he cannot enjoy or appreciate his own.”

“All men who have achieved great things have been great dreamers.”

“At every turn you propose to take, you will find someone to warn you away, to tell you not to take that road, that it will lead to disaster.”

“Before water generates steam, it must register two hundred and twelve degrees of heat. Two hundred degrees will not do it; two hundred and ten will not do it. The water must boil before it will generate enough steam to move an engine, to run a train. Lukewarm water will not run anything.

A great many people are trying to move their life trains with lukewarm water — or water that is almost boiling — and they are wondering why they are stalled, why they cannot get ahead. They are trying to run a boiler with two hundred or two hundred and ten degrees of heat, and they cannot understand why they do not get anywhere.

Lukewarmness in his work stands in the same relation to man’s achievement as lukewarm water does to the locomotive boiler. No man can hope to accomplish anything great in this world until he throws his whole soul, flings his force to his whole life, into it.”

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

“Dispense with the doctor by being temperate; the lawyer by keeping out of debt; the demagogue, by voting for honest men; and poverty, by being industrious.”

“Don't be afraid to think too highly of yourself. If the Creator made you and is not ashamed of the job, certainly you should not be. He pronounced His work good, and you should respect it.”

“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.”

“Faith is the best substitute for genius; in fact, it is closely allied to genius.”

“Growth everywhere neutralizes decay. So long as we keep growing, renewing the mind, constantly reaching out for the new and progressive, the retrograding, disintegrating, aging, deteriorating processes cannot be operative.”

“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.”

“Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony.”

“He who sticks to one thing is irresistible.”

“He wins the prize who pays the price.”

“If the farmer should make a mistake and sow thistle seed instead of wheat, the soil doesn't say to him: My friend, you have made a mistake. You have been sowing thistle seed instead of wheat, so we will change the law, so that you may get what you thought you were going to get.

No, the soil will always give us a harvest like our sowing. If we sow thistle seed it will be just as faithful in producing thistles as it will in producing wheat or cabbages or potatoes.”

“If you do not feel yourself growing in your work and your life broadening and deepening, if your task is not a perpetual tonic to you, you have not found your place.”

“It is impossible for us to intentionally hurt others without hurting ourselves as well.”

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

“It is like the seed put in the soil - the more one sows, the greater the harvest.”

“It is the ship at the wharf, not the ship at sea, that rots fastest – the still pool, not the running brook, that stagnates.”

“Just make up your mind at the very outset that your work is going to stand for quality, that you are going to stamp a superior quality upon everything that goes out of your hands, that whatever you do shall bear the hallmark of excellence.”

“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.”

“Like the sun, love radiates and warms into life all that it touches.”

“Men who have done great things, made stepping stones of their failures. The disgrace is not in falling, but in not rising every time you fall.”