Quill / Authors / Orison Swett Marden quotes
Orison Swett Marden quotes
Orison Swett Marden was an American writer who died in 1924. He founded Success magazine in 1897 and turned out inspirational books for decades. Quill quotes Pushing to the Front, Architects of Fate, The Victorious Attitude and Cheerfulness as a Life Power.
Read him for energy. Marden writes like a man at a podium, moving from one famous life to the next at speed, and his anecdotes work better as sermon illustrations than as history. His sentences were made to be remembered, which suits a Lock Screen.
60 lines shown, from the 222 in Quill. Only lines checked against a public-domain text appear on this page.
Pushing to the Front
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Fear strangles originality, daring, boldness; it kills individuality, and weakens all the mental processes.
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… Its power is shown by the fact that it actually changes the chemical composition of the secretions of the body. Fear victims not only age prematurely but they also die prematurely. All work done when one is suffering from a sense of fear or foreboding has little efficiency. Fear strangles originality, daring, boldness; it kills individuality, and weakens all the mental processes. Great things are never done under a sense of fear of some impending danger. Fear always indicates weakness, the presence of cowardice. What a slaughterer of years, what a sacrificer of happiness and ambitions, what a miner of careers this monster has been! The Bible says, "A …
The hardest work in the world is that which is grudgingly done.
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I have known employees actually to work harder in scheming, shirking, trying to keep from working hard in the performance of their duties, than they would have worked if they had tried to do their best, and had given the largest, the most liberal service possible to their employers. The hardest work in the world is that which is grudgingly done.
Be at peace with all the world at least once every twenty-four hours.
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Be at peace with all the world at least once every twenty-four hours. You can not afford to allow the enemies of your happiness and your manhood or womanhood to etch their miserable images deeper and deeper into your life and character as you sleep.
Learn to stop when you get through.
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Close, compact statement must be had. Learn to stop when you get through. Do not keep stringing out conversation or argument after you have made your point. You only weaken your case and prejudice people against you for your lack of tact, good judgment, or sense of proportion. Do not neutralize all the good impression you have made by talking on and on long after you have made your point.
Nature only gives us the use of faculties we employ.
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No person can be really healthful whose mind is not usefully and continually employed. So there is no possibility of finding real happiness in idleness if we are able to work. Nature brings a wonderful compensatory power to those who are crippled or sick or otherwise disabled from working, but there is no compensation for idleness in those who are able to work. Nature only gives us the use of faculties we employ. "Use or lose" is her motto, and when we cease to use a faculty or function it is gradually taken away from us, gradually shrivels and atrophies.
Work has system, laziness has none.
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The worst of a lost hour is not so much in the wasted time as in the wasted power. Idleness rusts the nerves and makes the muscles creak. Work has system, laziness has none.
Turn what you have read over and over in your mind.
Read a little at a time, but read some every day, no matter how little.
Character is greater than any career.
Victories that are easy are cheap.
Do the thing so many times that it will become second nature to you.
Whatever your vocation, let quality be your life-slogan.
All we accomplish by stimulating or crowding the body or mind when tired is worse than lost.
Many are victims of their moods, slaves of despondency.
Never allow yourself to think meanly, narrowly, poorly of yourself.
The only inferiority in us is what we put into ourselves.
Every day is a leaf in the book of life.
Book friends are always at our service, never annoy us, rasp or nettle us.
Aspiration lifts the life; groveling lowers it.
Let nothing tempt you or swerve you a hair's breadth from your aim, and you will win.
Fill your mind with courage, hope, and confidence.
Learn to meet hard times with a harder will, and more determined pluck.
Give your life, your energy, your enthusiasm, all to the highest work of which you are capable.
Patience is Nature's motto.
Make it a life-rule to give your best to whatever passes through your hands.
What people need is encouragement, uplift, hope.
Labor ever will be the inevitable price for everything that is valuable.
Architects of Fate
Read Architects of Fate on Project Gutenberg
The will can be educated.
Character is perpetual wealth, and by the side of him who possesses it the millionaire who has it not seems a pauper.
The world always stands aside for the determined man.
The man who has no money is poor, but one who has nothing but money is poorer than he.
Like a rubber ball, the harder the obstacle he meets the higher he rebounds.
Time and patience develop the sapling into the tree.
The greatest worth is never measured.
Mere energy is not enough, it must be concentrated on some steady, unwavering aim.
Great men are noted for their attention to trifles.
Man is not merely the architect of his own fortune, but he must lay the bricks himself.
Habit, like a child, repeats whatever is done before it.
Men have drawn from adversity the elements of greatness.
The great things of the world have not been done by men of large means.
The man without a purpose never leaves his mark upon the world.
The greatest geniuses have been the greatest workers.
Courage is victory, timidity is defeat.
Does competition trouble you? work away; what is your competitor but a man?
A great bank account can never make a man rich.
The Victorious Attitude
Read The Victorious Attitude on Project Gutenberg
Love lightens the burden and cheers the way.
The habit of conquering ourselves is the habit of victory; it strengthens all the faculties.
A sublime self-faith is absolutely indispensable to all great achievement.
We rise or fall by our ideals, by our pursuit or our disregard of them.
Dreaming without effort will only waste your power.
If we see only failure ahead we will act and look like failures.
We are too timid, too fearful of results even to attempt what we long to do.
The great prizes of life are for the courageous, the dauntless, the self-confident.
Our worst enemies are not outside but inside of us.
Love maintains perpetual summer in the soul and shuts out winter's chill.
Cheerfulness as a Life Power
Read Cheerfulness as a Life Power on Project Gutenberg
The past may have been hard, sad, or wrong,—but it is over.
Our lives are made up of trifles; emergencies rarely occur.
Two men who live in the same house and do the same work may not live in the same world.
Resolutely build a wall about to-day, and live within the inclosure.
We try to grasp too much of life at once; since we think of it as a whole, instead of living one day at a time.
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