Orison Swett Marden

Genius unexecuted is no more genius than a bushel of acorns is a forest of oaks.

Orison Swett Marden

Habit works powerfully for or against us. It is a good servant, but a tyrannical master.

Orison Swett Marden

Hate seed in the heart cannot produce a love flower in the life. A sinister thought will produce a sinister harvest. The revenge seed will produce a bloody harvest.

Orison Swett Marden

He who improves an opportunity sows a seed which will yield fruit in opportunity for himself and others.

Orison Swett Marden

He who would do some great thing in this short life must apply himself to the work with such a concentration of his forces as, to idle spectators, who live only to amuse themselves, looks like insanity.

Orison Swett Marden

I wish I could fill every young man who reads these pages with an utter dread and horror of poverty. I wish I could make you so feel its shame, its constraint, its bitterness that you would make vows against it.

Orison Swett Marden

I’ve never found any elevators in life; I’ve had to climb to every place worth reaching. And now I think it over, I wish it so with everybody, for then no one would rise any higher than he deserves to go.

Orison Swett Marden

If a thing seems to you worth working for at all, if it appears to you of moment enough to challenge any effort, then put into what you do all the enthusiasm of which you are capable, regardless of criticism.

Orison Swett Marden

If he would only burst his self-imposed shackles, get out of himself, break away from the narrow bounds of his sickly, limited thought, he could be a power in the world.

Orison Swett Marden

If our dreams are sincere desires to achieve, not mere pipe-dreams, there is something deep within ourselves which comes out to meet them and helps to make them realities.

Orison Swett Marden