Dr. Orison Swett Marden (1850–1924) was an American inspirational author who wrote on success in life and how to achieve it. His writings discuss common-sense principles and virtues that make for a well-rounded, successful life. Many of his ideas are based on New Thought philosophy.
Source: Wikipedia (via CC-BY-SA license) • READ: Works by Orison Swett Marden
Deep within man dwell those slumbering powers; powers that would astonish him, that he never dreamed of possessing; forces that would revolutionize his life if aroused and put into action.
—Orison Swett Marden
Topics: Possibilities, Ability
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.
—Orison Swett Marden
Topics: Help, Cooperation
Make it a life-rule to give your best to whatever passes through your hands. Stamp it with your manhood. Let superiority be your trademark…
—Orison Swett Marden
Topics: Excellence
You will never succeed while smarting under the drudgery of your occupation, if you are constantly haunted with the idea that you could succeed better in something else.
—Orison Swett Marden
Topics: Enjoyment
You cannot measure a man by his failures. You must know what use he makes of them. What did they mean to him. What did he get out of them.
—Orison Swett Marden
Topics: Failure
Character is the indelible mark that determines the only true value of all people and all their work.
—Orison Swett Marden
Topics: Character
There can be no great courage where there is no confidence or assurance, and half the battle is in the conviction that we can do what we undertake.
—Orison Swett Marden
Topics: Confidence
There can be no failure to a man who has not lost his courage, his character, his self respect, or his self-confidence. He is still a King.
—Orison Swett Marden
Topics: Mistakes
We cannot rise higher than our thought of ourselves.
—Orison Swett Marden
Topics: Vision, Prophecy
The moment a man ceases to progress, to grow higher, wider and deeper, then his life becomes stagnant.
—Orison Swett Marden
Topics: Progress
Begin where you are; work where you are; the hour which you are now wasting, dreaming of some far off success, may be crowded with grand possibilities.
—Orison Swett Marden
The waste of life occasioned by trying to do too many things at once is appalling.
—Orison Swett Marden
Topics: Excess, Waste
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.
—Orison Swett Marden
Topics: Planning, Preparation
Our trials, our sorrows, and our grieves develop us…
—Orison Swett Marden
Topics: Grief, Grieving
It is a psychological law that whatever we desire to accomplish we must impress upon the subjective or subconscious mind; that is, we must register a vow with ourselves, we must make our resolution with vigor, with faith that we can do the thing we want to do; we must register our conviction with such intensity that the great creative forces within us will tend to realize them. Our impressions will become expressions just in proportion to the vigor with which we register our vows to accomplish our ambitions, to make our visions realities.
—Orison Swett Marden
Topics: The Mind, Mind, Ambition
Success is not measured by what you accomplish, but by the opposition you have encountered, and the courage with which you have maintained the struggle against overwhelming odds.
—Orison Swett Marden
Topics: Success & Failure, Achievement
Great men are but common men more fully developed and ripened.
—Orison Swett Marden
Topics: Excellence
What keeps so many employers back is simple unwillingness to pay the price, to make the exertion, the effort to sacrifice their ease and comfort.
—Orison Swett Marden
Topics: Value
It is those who have this imperative demand for the best in their natures, and who will accept nothing short of it, that holds the banners of progress, that set the standards, the ideals, for others.
—Orison Swett Marden
Topics: Excellence
There is something greater than wealth, grander even than fame—manhood, character, stand for success… nothing else really does.
—Orison Swett Marden
Topics: Honesty
We make the world we live in and shape our own environment.
—Orison Swett Marden
The Creator has not given you a longing to do that which you have no ability to do.
—Orison Swett Marden
Topics: Ability
No man can be ideally successful until he has found his place. Like a locomotive he is strong on the track, but weak anywhere else.
—Orison Swett Marden
Topics: Enjoyment
Success is the child of drudgery and perseverance. It cannot be coaxed or bribed; pay the price and it is yours.
—Orison Swett Marden
Topics: Success, Success & Failure
The greatest thing a man can 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.
—Orison Swett Marden
Topics: Attitude, Youth, Excellence, Greatness & Great Things
There is only one thing for us to do, and that is to do our level best right where we are every day of our lives; To use our best judgment, and then to trust the rest to that Power which holds the forces of the universe in his hands.
—Orison Swett Marden
Topics: Excellence
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.
—Orison Swett Marden
Topics: Failure, Strength
Put the uncommon effort into the common task … make it large by doing it in a great way.
—Orison Swett Marden
Topics: Excellence, Effort
The influential man is the successful man, whether he be rich or poor.
—Orison Swett Marden
Topics: Influence, Leadership
Who would have ever heard of Theodore Roosevelt outside of his
immediate community if he had only half committed himself?
The great secret of his career was that he has flung his whole
life with all the determination and energy he could muster.
—Orison Swett Marden
This is the test of your manhood: How much is there left in you after you have lost everything outside of yourself?
—Orison Swett Marden
Topics: Courage, Bravery
What power can poverty have over a home where loving hearts are beating with a consciousness of untold riches of the head and heart?
—Orison Swett Marden
Topics: Poverty
A constant struggle, a ceaseless battle to bring success from inhospitable surroundings, is the price of all great achievements.
—Orison Swett Marden
Topics: Battle, Value, Achievement
Opportunities? They are all around us… There is power lying latent everywhere waiting for the observant eye to discover it.
—Orison Swett Marden
Topics: Opportunity
If we put the emphasis upon the right things, if we live the life that is worth while and then fail, we will survive all disasters, we will out-live all misfortune. We should be so well balanced and symmetrical, that nothing which could ever happen could throw us off our center, so that no matter what misfortune should overtake us, there would still be a whole magnificent man or woman left after being stripped of everything else.
—Orison Swett Marden
Topics: Honesty
When we are sure that we are on the right road there is no need to plan our journey too far ahead. No need to burden ourselves with doubts and fears as to the obstacles that may bar our progress. We cannot take more than one step at a time.
—Orison Swett Marden
Topics: Difficulty, Obstacles
The beginning of a habit is like an invisible thread, but every time we repeat the act we strengthen the strand, add to it another filament, until it becomes a great cable and binds us irrevocably thought and act.
—Orison Swett Marden
Topics: Habits, Habit
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 hall-mark of excellence.
—Orison Swett Marden
Topics: Excellence
You will always have to live with yourself, and it is to your best interest to see that you have good company—a clean, pure, straight, honest, upright, generous, magnanimous companion.
—Orison Swett Marden
Topics: Self-love
Resolve that whatever you do, you will bring the whole man to it; that you will fling the whole weight of your being into it.
—Orison Swett Marden
Topics: Commitment
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Ernest Holmes American New Thought Writer
Wallace Wattles American New Thought Author
Jean Houston American New Thought Author
Horatio Dresser American New Thought Religious Leader
Wayne Dyer American Self-help Author
Norman Vincent Peale American Clergyman, Self-Help Author
Edmund Hillary New Zealander Explorer, Humanitarian
Katherine Mansfield British Author
Eckhart Tolle German Spiritual Writer
Charles J. Givens American Self-Help Writer