"Before a man can lift himself he must lift his thoughts.
When we shall have learned to master our thought habits, to keep our minds
open to the great divine inflow of life force, we shall have learned the
truths of human endowment, human possibility."
"Encouragement is its keynote; it aims to arouse to honourable
exertion those who are drifting without aim, to awaken dormant ambitions
in those who have grown discouraged in the struggle for success."
"Don't wait for extraordinary opportunities. Seize common
occasions and make them great."
"Weak men wait for opportunities, strong men make them."
"There may not be one chance in a million that you will
ever receive unusual aid; but opportunities are often presented which you
can improve to good advantage, if you will only act."
"There is nobody whom Fortune does not visit once in his
life," says a cardinal; "but when she finds he is not ready to receive
her, she goes in at the door and out at the window."
"Don't wait for your opportunity. Make it,--make it as
the shepherd-boy Ferguson made his when he calculated the distances of
the stars with a handful of glass beads on a string. Make it as George
Stephenson made his when he mastered the rules of mathematics with a bit
of chalk on the grimy sides of the coal wagons in the mines. Make it, as
Napoleon made his in a hundred "impossible" situations. Make it, as all
leaders of men, in war and in peace, have made their chances of success.
Golden opportunities are nothing to laziness, but industry makes the commonest
chances golden."
"Time and patience develop the sapling into the tree.
So through discipline, education, experience, the sapling child is developed
into hardy mental, moral, physical man-timber."
"Thousands of men have made fortunes out of trifles which
others pass by. As the bee gets honey from the same flower from which the
spider gets poison, so some men will get a fortune out of the commonest
and meanest things, as scraps of leather, cotton waste, slag, iron filings,
from which others get only poverty and failure."
"First find out what the world needs and then supply what
they want."
"If you want to get rich, study yourself and your own
wants. You will find that millions have the same wants. The safest
business is always connected with man's prime necessities. He must have
clothing and dwelling; he must eat. He wants comforts, facilities of all
kinds for pleasure, education, and culture. Any man who can supply a great
want of humanity, improve any methods which men use, supply any demand
of comfort, or contribute in any way to their well-being, can make a fortune."
"Every young man should have a hobby to occupy his leisure
hours, something useful to which he can turn with delight. It might be
in line with his work or otherwise, only his heart must be in it."
"If one chooses wisely, the study, research, and occupation
that a hobby confers will broaden character and transform the home."
"Time is money. We should not be stingy or mean with it,
but we should not throw away an hour any more than we would throw away
a dollar-bill. Waste of time means waste of energy, waste of vitality,
waste of character in dissipation. It means the waste of opportunities
which will never come back. Beware how you kill time, for all your future
lives in it."
"No matter how many millions are out of employment, the
whole world is hunting for a man who can do things; a trained thinker who
can do whatever he undertakes a little better than it has ever before been
done. Everywhere it is the educated, the trained man, the man whose natural
ability has been enlarged, enhanced one hundredfold by superior training,
that is wanted."
"The greatest thing you can do is to be what you ought
to be."
"Knowledge is power only when it can be made available, practical."
Written by Orison Swett Marden
Pushing
To The Front
