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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

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Orison Swett Marden
Age: 75 †
Born: 1848
Born: June 11
Died: 1924
Died: March 10
Author
Medical Writer
Philosopher
Physician Writer
Poet Lawyer
Writer
New Hampshire
United States
O. Swett Marden
Inspirational
Weak
Seizing
Great
Strength
Seize
Make
Challenges
Occasions
Men
Responsibility
Determination
Waiting
Opportunities
Common
Greatness
Opportunity
Extraordinary
Strong
Wait
Opportunist

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Every germ of goodness will at last struggle into bloom and fruitage...true success follows every right step.
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Talk happiness. The world is sad enough without your woe.
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Work, love and play are the great balance wheels of man's being.
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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 hallmark of excellence.
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Our thoughts and imaginations are the only real limits to our possibilities.
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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.
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Worry clogs the brain and paralyzes the thought. A troubled brain can not think clearly, vigorously, locally.
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Many mothers make the mistake of forever looking for the bad in the child, trying to . . . uproot and drive it out. This is like trying to eject the darkness from a room without opening the shutters and letting in the light. As John Newton said, 'I cannot sweep the darkness out, but I can shine it out.'
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We fail to see that we can control our destiny make ourselves do whatever is possible make ourselves become whatever we long to be.
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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.
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It is like the seed put in the soil - the more one sows, the greater the harvest.
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The divine injunction to be perfect, even as He is perfect, was not given man to mock him. The possibility of our waking in His likeness is literally true.
Orison Swett Marden
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The size of your accomplishments, the quality of your achievement, will depend very largely on how big a man you see in yourself, what sort of image you get of your possible self, yourself at your best.
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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.
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Something greater than wealth, grander even than fame — that manhood, character, stand for success, and that nothing else really does.
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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.
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Self-confidence carries conviction it makes other people believe in us.
Orison Swett Marden
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Even the men most richly endowed with ability, education, and opportunity, even the giants of the race, after the completest life possible, feel, as they stand on the edge of the grave, that they are but human acorns with all their possibilities still in them, just beginning to sprout.
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The mill cannot grind with the water that has passed.
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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