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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

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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
Opportunity
Educated
Use
Ridiculous
Great
Profit
Make
Valuable
Prepared
Occasion
Unless
Occasions
Education
Preparation
Chance
Proportion

More quotes by Orison Swett Marden

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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
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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
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There never will be a trust in excellence or a combination in superiority. As long as you can do a thing a little better than anybody else can do it, you need no bond or trade-mark to protect the product of your brains.
Orison Swett Marden
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It is what we do easily and what we like to do that we do well.
Orison Swett Marden
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Concentrate . . . for the greatest achievements are reserved for the man of single aim, in whom no rival powers divide the empire of the soul.
Orison Swett Marden
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Character: the grandest thing in the world.
Orison Swett Marden
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The Creator has not given you a longing to do that which you have no ability to do.
Orison Swett Marden
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A constant struggle, a ceaseless battle to bring success from inhospitable surroundings, is the price of all great achievements.
Orison Swett Marden
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There is no law by which one can, as long as he thinks he can't.
Orison Swett Marden
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The mill cannot grind with the water that has passed.
Orison Swett Marden
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Whatever our creed, we feel that no good deed can by any possibility go unrewarded, no evil deed unpunished.
Orison Swett Marden
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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.'
Orison Swett Marden
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A man will remain a rag-picker as long as he has only the vision of a rag-picker.
Orison Swett Marden
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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
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Great men are but common men more fully developed and ripened.
Orison Swett Marden
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It is just the little touches after the average man would quit that make the master's fame.
Orison Swett Marden
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Society is to the individual what the sun and showers are to the seed. It develops him, expands him, unfolds him, calls him out of himself. Other men are his opportunity. Each one is a match which ignites some new tinder in him unignitible by any previous match. Without these the sparks of individuality would sleep in him forever.
Orison Swett Marden
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Worry clogs the brain and paralyzes the thought. A troubled brain can not think clearly, vigorously, locally.
Orison Swett Marden
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All men who have achieved great things have been great dreamers.
Orison Swett Marden
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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