Orison Swett Marden (1848–1924) was an American inspirational author and founder of Success magazine. As a pioneer in the self-help genre, Marden authored numerous books, including “Pushing to the Front” and “How to Succeed,” which emphasized principles of personal development, positive thinking, and achieving success. His writings had a significant impact on the early 20th-century self-improvement movement, influencing many later success coaches and motivational speakers. Marden’s emphasis on cultivating a positive mindset and perseverance continues to inspire individuals seeking personal and professional growth.
Orison Swett Marden Quotes
1. “Weak men wait for opportunities; strong men make them.”
— Orison Swett Marden
2. “Learn From Yesterday, Live for Today, hope for tomorrow.”
— Orison Swett Marden
3. “A good system shortens the road to the goal.”
— Orison Swett Marden
4. “Don’t wait for extraordinary opportunities. Seize common occasions and make them great. Weak men wait for opportunities; strong men make them.”
— Orison Swett Marden
5. “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
6. “A constant struggle, a ceaseless battle to bring success from inhospitable surroundings, is the price of all great achievements.”
— Orison Swett Marden
7. “There is no medicine like hope, no incentive so great, and no tonic so powerful as expectation of something tomorrow.”
— Orison Swett Marden
8. “The golden rule for every businessman is this: ‘Put yourself in your customer’s place.’”
— Orison Swett Marden
9. “Be larger than your task.”
— Orison Swett Marden
10. “Conquer yourself and you can conquer everything else.”
— Orison Swett Marden
11. “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
12. “Self-confidence carries conviction; it makes other people believe in us.”
— Orison Swett Marden
13. “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
14. “Success is the child of drudgery and perseverance. It cannot be coaxed or bribed; pay the price and it is yours.”
— Orison Swett Marden
15. “Without continuous effort there cannot be continuous achievement.”
— Orison Swett Marden
16. “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
17. “The quality of your work, in the long run, is the deciding factor on how much your services are valued by the world.”
— Orison Swett Marden
18. “Most of our obstacles would melt away if, instead of cowering before them, we should make up our minds to walk boldly through them.”
— Orison Swett Marden
19. “We must give more in order to get more. It is the generous giving of ourselves that produces the generous harvest.”
— Orison Swett Marden
20. “Our thoughts and imagination are the only real limits to our possibilities.”
— Orison Swett Marden
21. “Put yourself in your customer’s place.”
— Orison Swett Marden
22. “Work, love, and play are the great balance wheels of man’s being.”
— Orison Swett Marden
23. “We make the world we live in and shape our own environment.”
— Orison Swett Marden
24. “Make every occasion a great occasion, for you can never tell who may be taking your measure for a higher place.”
— Orison Swett Marden
25. “Every great man has become great, every successful man has succeeded, in proportion as he has confined his powers to one particular channel.”
— Orison Swett Marden
26. “Live and let live is not enough; live and help live is not too much.”
— Orison Swett Marden
27. “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.”
— Orison Swett Marden
28. “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.”
— Orison Swett Marden
29. “Believe with all your heart that you will do what you were made to do.”
— Orison Swett Marden
30. “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.”
— Orison Swett Marden
31. “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.”
— Orison Swett Marden
32. “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
33. “Money, influence, and position are nothing compared with brains, principles, energy, and perseverance.”
— Orison Swett Marden
34. “We lift ourselves by our own thought; we climb upon our vision of ourselves.”
— Orison Swett Marden
35. “Real happiness is so simple that most people do not recognize it. It is derived from the simplest, the quietest, the most unpretentious things in the world.”
— Orison Swett Marden
36. “All who have accomplished great things have had a great aim, have fixed their gaze on a goal which was high, one which sometimes seemed impossible.”
— Orison Swett Marden
37. “A man will remain a rag-picker as long as he has only the vision of a rag-picker.”
— Orison Swett Marden
38. “Obstacles will look large or small to you according to whether you are large or small.”
— Orison Swett Marden
39. “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
40. “There is genius in persistence. It conquers all opposers. It gives confidence. It annihilates obstacles. Everybody believes in a determined man. People know that when he undertakes a thing, the battle is half won, for his rule is to accomplish whatever he sets out to do.”
— Orison Swett Marden
41. “The best thing about giving of ourselves is that what we get is always better than what we give. The reaction is greater than the action.”
— Orison Swett Marden
42. “The Creator has not given you a longing to do that which you have no ability to do.”
— Orison Swett Marden
43. “You will find the whole world will change to you when you change your attitude toward it.”
— Orison Swett Marden
44. “Find your purpose and fling your life out to it. Find a way or make one. Try with all your might. Self-made or never made.”
— Orison Swett Marden
45. “Joyfulness keeps the heart and face young. A good laugh makes us better friends with ourselves and everybody around us.”
— Orison Swett Marden
46. “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
47. “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.”
— Orison Swett Marden
48. “Most men fail, not through lack of education, but from lack of dogged determination, from lack of dauntless will.”
— Orison Swett Marden
49. “There are powers inside of you which, if you could discover and use, would make of you everything you ever dreamed or imagined you could become.”
— Orison Swett Marden
50. “We cannot rise higher than our thought of ourselves.”
— Orison Swett Marden
51. “Doing common things uncommonly well.”
— Orison Swett Marden
52. “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
53. “Ambition is the incentive that makes purpose GREAT and ACHIEVEMENT greater!”
— Orison Swett Marden
54. “Opportunity always looks bigger going than coming.”
— Orison Swett Marden
55. “The golden opportunity you are seeking is in yourself. It is not in your environment; it is not in luck or chance, or the help of others; it is in yourself alone.”
— Orison Swett Marden
56. “Forests, lakes, and rivers, clouds and winds, stars and flowers, stupendous glaciers and crystal snowflakes – every form of animate or inanimate existence, leaves its impress upon the soul of man.”
— Orison Swett Marden
57. “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
58. “Opportunity is often missed because we are broadcasting when we should be tuning in.”
— Orison Swett Marden
59. “No one should voluntarily remain in an environment which prevents his development.”
— Orison Swett Marden
60. “One penny may seem to you a very insignificant thing, but it is the small seed from which fortunes spring.”
— Orison Swett Marden
61. “Your outlook upon life, your estimate of yourself, your estimate of your value are largely colored by your environment. Your whole career will be modified, shaped, molded by your surroundings, by the character of the people with whom you come in contact every day.”
— Orison Swett Marden
62. “There is no failure for the man who realizes his power, who never knows when he is beaten; there is no failure for the determined endeavor; the unconquerable will.”
— Orison Swett Marden
63. “The hopeful man sees success where others see failure, sunshine where others see shadows and storm.”
— Orison Swett Marden
64. “We advance on our journey only when we face our goal when we are confident and believe we are going to win out.”
— Orison Swett Marden
65. “Man becomes a slave to his constantly repeated acts. What he at first chooses, at last, compels.”
— Orison Swett Marden
66. “The wearer of smiles and the bearer of a kindly disposition needs no introduction, but is welcome anywhere.”
— Orison Swett Marden
67. “We win half the battle when we make up our minds to take the world as we find it including the thorns.”
— Orison Swett Marden
68. “Achievement is not always a success, while reputed failure often is. It is honest endeavor, persistent effort to do the best possible under any and all circumstances.”
— Orison Swett Marden
69. “The giants of the race have been men of concentration, who have struck sledgehammer blows in one place until they have accomplished their purpose. The successful men of today are men of one overmastering idea, one unwavering aim, men of single and intense purpose.”
— Orison Swett Marden
70. “Character is the indelible mark that determines the only true value of all people and all their work.”
— Orison Swett Marden
71. “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.”
— Orison Swett Marden
72. “The trouble with us is that we expect too much from the great happenings, the unusual things, and we overlook the common flowers on the path of life, from which we might abstract sweets, comforts, delights.”
— Orison Swett Marden
73. “There is no stimulus like that which comes from the consciousness of knowing that others believe in us.”
— Orison Swett Marden
74. “Aspiration lifts the life; groveling lowers it. When we are striving for excellence in everything we do the entire life grows and expands, but if we allow our standards to drop, there is a natural progression that follows, a tendency for a downward effort in all that we do thereafter.”
— Orison Swett Marden
75. “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
76. “Every child should be taught to expect success.”
— Orison Swett Marden
77. “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.”
— Orison Swett Marden
78. “Poverty often hides her charms under an ugly mask, yet thousands have been forced into greatness by their very struggle to keep the wolf from the door.”
— Orison Swett Marden
79. “Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony.”
— Orison Swett Marden
80. “How can I develop myself into the grandest possible manhood?”
— Orison Swett Marden
81. “Paradise is here or nowhere: you must take your joy with you or you will never find it.”
— Orison Swett Marden
82. “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.”
— Orison Swett Marden
83. “There is no investment you can make which will pay you so well as the effort to scatter sunshine and good cheer through your establishment.”
— Orison Swett Marden
84. “If you cannot at first control your anger, learn to control your tongue, which, like fire, is a good servant, but a hard master.”
— Orison Swett Marden
85. “What we sincerely believe regarding ourselves is true for us.”
— Orison Swett Marden
86. “Genius, that power which dazzles mortal eyes, is but perseverance in disguise.”
— Orison Swett Marden
87. “It is psychological law that whatever we desire to accomplish we must impress upon the subjective or subconscious mind.”
— Orison Swett Marden
88. “There is an infinite difference between a little wrong and just right, between fairly good and the best, between mediocrity and superiority.”
— Orison Swett Marden
89. “Mirth is God’s medicine; everybody ought to bathe in it. Grim care, moroseness, anxiety- all the rust of life- ought to be scoured off by the oil of mirth.”
— Orison Swett Marden
90. “The waste of life occasioned by trying to do too many things at once is appalling.”
— Orison Swett Marden
91. “Our thoughts are like roots which reach out in every direction into the cosmic ocean of formless energy, and these thought-roots set in motion vibrations like themselves and attract the affinities of our desires and ambitions.”
— Orison Swett Marden
92. “The power of material things, to bestow happiness, to bring joy into the life is tremendously exaggerated. But The right mental attitude for example gratitude that things are not worse, the trained mind the right habits of thought – lifeskills, will bring to us the best there is in the universe.”
— Orison Swett Marden
93. “The lack of opportunity is ever the excuse of the weak.”
— Orison Swett Marden
94. “Joyfulness keeps the heart and face young.”
— Orison Swett Marden
95. “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
96. “Superiority – doing things a little better than anybody else can do them.”
— Orison Swett Marden
97. “No man is beaten until his hope is annihilated, his confidence gone, As long as a man faces life hopefully, confidently, triumphantly, he is not a failure; he is not beaten until he turns his back on life.”
— Orison Swett Marden
98. “To think you can creates the force that can.”
— Orison Swett Marden
99. “When you finish a thing you ought to be able to say to yourself: ‘There, I am willing to stand for that piece of work. It is not pretty well done; it is done as well as I can do it; done to a complete finish. I will stand for that. I am willing to be judged by it.’”
— Orison Swett Marden
100. “Our trials, our sorrows, and our grieves develop us.”
— Orison Swett Marden
