Orison Swett Marden: The Premium Collection, Wisdom & Empowerment Series 

Orison Swett Marden was the founder of Success Magazine and wrote in the early 1900’s around self help and what he learned from the achievers of excellence. Some of his language is old school but lots of gems in here and he kinda fires me up!

 

“No one can make the most of himself until he looks upon his life as a magnificent possibility, the material for a great masterpiece to mar or spoil which would be a tragedy. Without such an ideal, without an ambition to live the life triumphant, the life worth while, that which will call out the largest, completest, superbest man or woman one is capable of being, there is no possibility of true success.”

 

WIll Power

• The achievements of history have been the choices, the determinations, the creations, of the human will. It was the will, quiet or pugnacious, gentle or grim, of men like Wilberforce and Garrison, Goodyear and Cyrus Field, Bismarck and Grant, that made them indomitable. They simply would do what they planned. Such men can no more be stopped than the sun can be, or the tide. Most men fail, not through lack of education or agreeable personal qualities, but from lack of dogged determination, from lack of dauntless will.
• The conditions under which the battle of life is being fought, without perceiving how much really depends upon the extent to which the will-power is cultivated, strengthened, and made operative in right directions.” Young people need to go into training for it.
• The athlete trains for his race; and the mind must be put into training if one will win life’s race.
• What is will-power, looked at in a large way, but energy of character? Energy of will, self-originating force, is the soul of every great character. Where it is, there is life; where it is not, there is faintness, helplessness, and despondency. “Let it be your first study to teach the world that you are not wood and straw; that there is some iron in you.”
• “There are three kinds of people in the world,” says a recent writer, “the wills, the won’ts, and the can’ts. The first accomplish everything; the second oppose everything; the third fail in everything.”
• To the man who is determined to get on in the world, every circumstance in life may be turned to advantage.

“It is,” says Professor Mathews, “only by continued, strenuous efforts, repeated again and again, day after day, week after week, and month after month, that the ability can be acquired to fasten the mind to one subject, however abstract or knotty, to the exclusion of everything else. The process of obtaining this self-mastery–this complete command of one’s mental powers–is a gradual one, its length varying with the mental constitution of each person; but its acquisition is worth infinitely more than the utmost labor it ever costs.”

• “Perhaps the most valuable result of all education,” it was said by Professor Huxley, “is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson which ought to be learned, and, however early a man’s training begins, it is probably the last lesson which he learns thoroughly.”

Make More out of Less

• He makes the most of life who makes the most of each passing instant.
• When Henry Ward Beecher was asked how it was that he could accomplish so much more than other men, he replied: “I don’t do more, but less, than other people. They do all their work three times over: once in anticipation, once in actuality, once in rumination. I do mine in actuality alone, doing it once instead of three times.” 
  • This was by the intelligent exercise of Mr. Beecher’s will-power in concentrating his mind upon what he was doing at a given moment, and then turning to something else… One of the secrets of a successful life is to be able to hold all of our energies upon one point, to focus all of the scattered rays of the mind upon one place or thing.
  • Similar to Andrew Carnegie saying how he only worked in the morning and accomplished more in those hours then most men do in a week. 
• What young man is really too busy to give an hour a day to self-improvement, self-enlargement? One hour a day for a short time profitably employed would enable men of ordinary capacity to master a complete science. One hour a day in ten years would make an ignorant man a well-informed man. In an hour a day a boy or girl could read twenty pages thoughtfully—more than seven thousand pages in a year, or eighteen large volumes. An hour a day might make—nay—has made—an unknown man famous, a useless man a benefactor of his race. Think of the mighty possibilities of two—four—yes, even six hours a day that are often thrown away by young men and women in frivolous amusement!

One of the secrets of a successful life is to be able to hold all of our energies upon one point, to focus all of the scattered rays of the mind upon one place or thing.

 

True Success

• “How few of us realize that true success, which is open to all, is not measured by the accomplishment of some great thing; that it does not consist in being wealthy, famous, or powerful; but that it is the crown of all who honestly, earnestly do their best and live the everyday simple life, with all that it involves in the practice of the commonplace duties of every day. It is by the exercise of the common, homely virtues; it is by trying to do everything one attempts to a complete finish; by trying to be scrupulously honest in every transaction; by always ringing true in our friendships, even by holding a helpful, accommodating attitude toward those about us; by trying to fulfill to the best of our ability the obligation to be noble, to be loyal to our highest ideals, it is by such things as these that we make successful lives.”

 

Optimism

• “Optimism is a builder. It is to the individual what the sun is to vegetation. It is the sunshine of the mind, which constructs life, beauty, and growth in everything within its reach. Our mental faculties grow and thrive in it just as the plants and trees grow and thrive in the physical sunshine. Pessimism is negative, it is the darkened dungeon which destroys vitality and strangles growth.”
• “I have never known a man who had a small, belittling image of himself to do a great thing. We can never get more out of ourselves than we expect. If you expect large things from yourself, and demand them, if you hold the large mental attitude toward your work, you will get much bigger results than if you depreciate yourself and look only for little results.”
• It is not difficult to shut out poisonous thoughts from the mind. All one need do is to substitute the opposite thought to that which produces the fatal poison, for it will always furnish the antidote.

I Will

• There are no two words in the English language which stand out in bolder relief, like kings upon a checker-board, to so great an extent as the words ‘I will.’ There is strength, depth and solidity, decision, confidence and power, determination, vigor and delivery. It talks to you of triumph over difficulties, of victory in the face of discouragement, of will to promise and strength to perform, of lofty and daring enterprise, of unfettered aspirations, and of the thousand and one solid impulses by which man masters impediments in the way of progression.”

• What is will-power, looked at in a large way, but energy of character? Energy of will, self-orginating force, is the soul of every great character. Where it is, there is life; where it is not, there is faintness, helplessness, and despondency. “Let it be your first study to teach the world that you are not wood and straw; that there is some iron in you.” Men who have left their mark upon the world have been men of great and prompt decision. The achievements of will-power are almost beyond computation. Scarcely anything seems impossible to the man who can will strongly enough and long enough. One talent with a will behind it will accomplish more than ten without it, as a thimbleful of powder in a rifle, the bore of whose barrel will give it direction, will do greater execution than a carload burned in the open air.

 

Focus

• “Genius, that power which dazzles mortal eyes, Is oft but Perseverance in disguise.”
• Many a man would have been a success had he connected his fragmentary efforts. Spasmodic, disconnected attempts, without concentration, uncontrolled by any fixed idea, will never bring success. It is continuity of purpose alone that achieves results.
• To stick to a thing till you are master, is a test of intellectual discipline and power.
• No young man can hope to do anything above the commonplace who has not made his life a reservoir of power on which he can constantly draw, which will never fail him in any emergency. Be sure that you have stored away, in your power-house, the energy, the knowledge that will be equal to the great occasion when it comes. “If I were twenty, and had but ten years to live,” said a great scholar and writer, “I would spend the first nine years accumulating knowledge and getting ready for the tenth.”

“He who is silent is forgotten; he who does not advance falls back; he who stops is overwhelmed, distanced, crushed; he who ceases to become greater, becomes smaller; he who leaves off gives up; the stationary is the beginning of the end–it precedes death; to live is to achieve, to will without ceasing.”

The king is the man who can.–Carlyle.

“We get light from the electric current in proportion to the number of candle power in the electric bulb. The filament in a four power candle lamp cannot take off the light of a sixteen candle power lamp. We are human bulbs attached to the great universal current of force and power, and the light which we give off depends on the candle power of our lamps. Many people go through life with a little dim four candle light, not because they lack power to generate a stronger light, but because they never learned how to express their power. Why be a candle when you can be an arc light?”

 

“‘What is your best work?’ was the question asked of the sculptor. ‘My next,’ he said.”

 

You are the Captain of Your Life Ship

• What would become of a sea captain who whenever he saw a fog settling down on the waters, or a storm coming up, would turn his ship around and sail back to the port he had left? You know he would lose his job and be branded as an incompetent and a coward. Every sea captain keeps his ship true to the compass and he plows through fogs, storms or hurricanes to his distant goal. You are the captain of your life ship, and it is up to you to bring it into port grandly. If you haven’t the qualities of a good sea captain your ship is in danger. Downright hard work, a purpose which never flags, a grit and nerve which never retreat; these are the qualities that make life victorious.
• It would be impossible for a ship to come into a certain port without a compass as it would be for a man or woman to make any headway on the sea of life without a purpose. Nobody ever drifts into anything desirable. To get the thing worth while you must know where your goal lies, and you must make straight for it, past all the rocks and sandbars.

The Little Things Become The Big Things

• It may seem a very far cry from such trivialities to the great catastrophes of life, but to my mind the highest courage, the finest and most complete self-mastery are no more than the result of the habit of control and steadiness in the small things of life. The man or woman who meets the little things calmly will be prepared for the more serious or the unexpected, and will ultimately, through force of habit, attain that sublime order of courage, poise, self-mastery, which even the greatest calamity cannot shake. And though his highest courage may never be put to the test, the one who has habituated himself to self-control in little things will have gained the strength of character that will make him a person of mark in every situation of life.

Belief

• The man of iron will is cool in the hour of danger.
• The shores of fortune, as Foster says, are covered with the stranded wrecks of men of brilliant ability, but who have wanted courage, faith, and decision, and have therefore perished in sight of more resolute but less capable adventurers, who succeeded in making port.
• The man without self-reliance and an iron will is the plaything of chance, the puppet of his environment, the slave of circumstances. Are not doubts the greatest of enemies?
• If you would succeed up to the limit of your possibilities, must you not constantly hold to the belief that you are success-organized, and that you will be successful, no matter what opposes? You are never to allow a shadow of doubt to enter your mind that the Creator intended you to win in life’s battle. Regard every suggestion that your life may be a failure, that you are not made like those who succeed, and that success is not for you, as a traitor, and expel it from your mind as you would a thief from your house.
• The world takes us at our own valuation. It believes in the man who believes in himself, but it has little use for the timid man, the one who is never certain of himself; who cannot rely on his own judgment, who craves advice from others, and is afraid to go ahead on his own account.
• He who waits for certainty never wins.

Stoutly assert your divine right to hold your head up and look the world in the face; step bravely to the front whatever opposes, and the world will make way for you. No one will insist upon your rights while you yourself doubt that you have any. Believe you were made for the place you fill. Put forth your whole energies. Be awake, electrify yourself; go forth to the task.

 

A young man once said to his employer, “Don’t give me an easy job. I want to handle heavy boxes, shoulder great loads. I would like to lift a big mountain and throw it into the sea,”

• History furnishes thousands of examples of men who have seized occasions to accomplish results deemed impossible by those less resolute. Prompt decision and whole-souled action sweep the world before them.
  • Impossible exists only in our minds… 

“I TRAMPLE ON IMPOSSIBILITIES“

• What a mighty will Darwin had! He was in continual ill health. He was in constant suffering. His patience was marvellous. No one but his wife knew what he endured. “For forty years,” says his son, “he never knew one day of health;” yet during those forty years he unremittingly forced himself to do the work from which the mightiest minds and the strongest constitutions would have shrunk. He had a wonderful power of sticking to a subject. He used almost to apologize for his patience, saying that he could not bear to be beaten, as if it were a sign of weakness.
• He advises us to refuse to be ill, never to tell people we are ill, never to own it ourselves. Illness is one of those things which a man should resist on principle. Do not dwell upon your ailments nor study your symptoms. Never allow yourself to be convinced that you are not complete master of yourself. Stoutly affirm your own superiority over bodily ills. We should keep a high ideal of health and harmony constantly before the mind.
• Is not the mind the natural protector of the body? We cannot believe that the Creator has left the whole human race entirely at the mercy of only about half a dozen specific drugs which always act with certainty. There is a divine remedy placed within us for many of the ills we suffer.

 

It is individual effort that has achieved everything worth achieving.

Has not self-help accomplished about all the great things of the world?

• It is every one’s sacred duty to keep himself up to the highest possible standard, physically and mentally, otherwise he cannot deliver to the world the divine message entrusted to him by his creator.
• But success is the child of drudgery and perseverance. It cannot be coaxed or bribed; pay the price, and it is yours. A constant struggle, a ceaseless battle to bring success from inhospitable surroundings, is the price of all great achievements.
• “He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill: our antagonist is our helper.” Everyone is an Ally 

Persistence 

• The power to hold on is characteristic of all men who have accomplished anything great; they may lack in some other particular, have many weaknesses or eccentricities, but the quality of persistence is never absent from a successful man. No matter what opposition he meets or what discouragement overtakes him, drudgery cannot disgust him, obstacles cannot discourage him, labor cannot weary him; misfortune, sorrow, and reverses cannot harm him.

“Go on, sir, go on. The difficulties you meet with will resolve themselves as you advance. Proceed; and light will dawn, and shine with increasing clearness on your path.”

“Do you know that in literature a man must be either a king or a beggar?” “Very well,” was the reply, “I will be a king.”

“Poor fellow!” said Emerson, as he looked at his delicately-reared little son, “how much he loses by not having to go through the hard experiences I had in my youth.”

• The paradox of parenthood. Our greatest struggles and failures made us who we are but we do everything we can to protect our children from those same hurtful experiences. 

 

Purpose

• “Your whole thought current must be set in the direction of your life purpose. The great miracles of civilization are wrought by thought concentration. Live in the very soul of expectation of better things, in the conviction that something large, grand, and beautiful will await you if your efforts are intelligent, if your mind is kept in a creative condition and you struggle upward to your goal. Live in the conviction that you are eternally progressing, advancing toward something higher, better, in every atom of your being.”
• We hear a great deal of talk about genius, talent, luck, chance, cleverness, and fine manners playing a large part in one’s success. Leaving out luck and chance, all these elements are important factors. Yet the possession of any or all of them, unaccompanied by a definite aim, a determined purpose, will not insure success.
• People know that it is useless to oppose a man who uses his stumbling-blocks as stepping-stones; who is not afraid of defeat; who never, in spite of calumny or criticism, shrinks from his task; who never shirks responsibility; who always keeps his compass pointed to the north star of his purpose, no matter what storms may rage about him.

“Three things are necessary,” said Charles Sumner, “first, backbone; second, backbone; third, backbone.”

• A good chance alone is nothing. Education is nothing without strong and vigorous resolution and stamina to make one accomplish something in the world. An encouraging start is nothing without backbone. A man who cannot stand erect, who wabbles first one way and then the other, who has no opinion of his own, or courage to think his own thought, is of very little use in this world. It is grit, it is perseverance, it is moral stamina and courage that govern the world.
• “It is interesting to notice how some minds seem almost to create themselves,” says Irving, “springing up under every disadvantage, and working their solitary but irresistible way through a thousand obstacles.” Opposing circumstances create strength. Opposition gives us greater power of resistance. To overcome one barrier gives us greater ability to overcome the next.

 

Success is not measured by what a man accomplishes, but by the opposition he has encountered, and the courage with which he has maintained the struggle against overwhelming odds. Not the distance we have run, but the obstacles we have overcome, the disadvantages under which we have made the race, will decide the prizes.

 

Do not, then, be afraid of defeat. You are never so near to victory as when defeated in a good cause.”

• Governor Seymour of New York, a man of great force and character, said, in reviewing his life: “If I were to wipe out twenty acts, what should they be? Should it be my business mistakes, my foolish acts (for I suppose all do foolish acts occasionally), my grievances? No; for, after all, these are the very things by which I have profited. So I finally concluded I should expunge, instead of my mistakes, my triumphs. I could not afford to dismiss the tonic of mortification, the refinement of sorrow; I needed them every one.”

• “Every condition, be it what it may,” says Channing, “has hardships, hazards, pains. We try to escape them; we pine for a sheltered lot, for a smooth path, for cheering friends, and unbroken success. But Providence ordains storms, disasters, hostilities, sufferings; and the great question whether we shall live to any purpose or not, whether we shall grow strong in mind and heart, or be weak and pitiable, depends on nothing so much as on our use of the adverse circumstances.
• Outward evils are designed to school our passions, and to rouse our faculties and virtues into intenser action. Sometimes they seem to create new powers. Difficulty is the element, and resistance the true work of man. Self-culture never goes on so fast as when embarrassed circumstances, the opposition of men or the elements, unexpected changes of the times, or other forms of suffering, instead of disheartening, throw us on our inward resources, turn us for strength to God, clear up to us the great purpose of life, and inspire calm resolution. No greatness or goodness is worth much, unless tried in these fires.”
• where everything is pusher or pushed, he who would succeed must hold his ground and push hard; that what are stumbling-blocks and defeats to the weak and vacillating, are but stepping-stones and victories to the strong and determined.

Be True To Yourself, Chisel Your Own Statue 

Wanted, a man who will not lose his individuality in a crowd, a man who has the courage of his convictions, who is not afraid to say “No,” though all the world say “Yes.”

• “First of all, I must make myself a man, if I do not succeed in that, I can succeed in nothing.”
• Jean Paul Richter: “I have made as much out of myself as could be made of the stuff, and no man should require more.”
• The Spartans did not inquire how many the enemy are, but where they are.—AGIS II.
• What’s brave, what’s noble, let’s do it after the high Roman fashion, and make death proud to take us.—SHAKESPEARE.
• We make way for the man who boldly pushes past us.—BOVÉE.
• We live ridiculously for fear of being thought ridiculous.
• The youth who starts out by being afraid to speak what he thinks will usually end by being afraid to think what he wishes.
• If a man would accomplish anything in this world, he must not be afraid of assuming responsibilities. Of course it takes courage to run the risk of failure, to be subjected to criticism for an unpopular cause, to expose one’s self to the shafts of everybody’s ridicule, but the man who is not true to himself, who cannot carry out the sealed orders placed in his hands at his birth, regardless of the world’s yes or no, of its approval or disapproval, the man who has not the courage to trace the pattern of his own destiny, which no other soul knows but his own, can never rise to the true dignity of manhood.

Vision

• “All men who have achieved great things have been dreamers, and what they have accomplished has been just in proportion to the vividness, the energy, and persistency with which they visualized their ideals; held to their dreams and struggled to make them come true. Do not give up your dream because it is apparently not being realized; because you can not see it coming true. Cling to your vision with all the tenacity you can muster. Keep it bright; do not let the bread-and-butter side of life cloud your ideal or dim it. Keep in an ambition-rousing atmosphere. Read the books which will stimulate your ambition. Get close to people who have done what you are trying to do, and try to absorb the secret of their success.”

Courage

• All the world loves courage; youth craves it; they want to hear about it, they want to read about it.
• Our life is grand or ordinary, large or small, in proportion to the insight and strength of our faith.
• There is nothing attractive in timidity, nothing lovable in fear. Both are deformities and are repulsive. Manly courage is dignified and graceful. The worst manners in the world are those of persons conscious “of being beneath their position, and trying to conceal it or make up for it by style.”
• Bruno, condemned to be burned alive in Rome, said to his judge: “You are more afraid to pronounce my sentence than I am to receive it.”

 

Doubt indulged becomes doubt realized. To determine to do anything is half the battle. To think a thing is impossible is to make it so. Courage is victory, timidity is defeat.

• “Freedom is essential to achievement. No one can do his greatest work when his mind is cramped with worry, anxiety, fear, or uncertainty, any more than he can do his best physical work with his body in a cramped position. Absolute freedom is imperative for the best brain work. Uncertainty and doubt are great enemies of that concentration which is the secret of all effectiveness. Confidence has ever been the great foundation stone. It has performed miracles in every line of endeavor.”

Take Action

• Execute your resolutions immediately. Thoughts are but dreams till their effects be tried. Does competition trouble you? work away; what is your competitor but a man? Conquer your place in the world, for all things serve a brave soul. Combat difficulty manfully; sustain misfortune bravely; endure poverty nobly; encounter disappointment courageously.
• Don’t waste time dreaming of obstacles you may never encounter, or in crossing bridges you have not reached.

“Our enemies are before us,” exclaimed the Spartans at Thermopylae. “And we are before them,” was the cool reply of Leonidas. “Deliver your arms,” came the message from Xerxes. “Come and take them,” was the answer Leonidas sent back. A Persian soldier said: “You will not be able to see the sun for flying javelins and arrows.” “Then we will fight in the shade,” replied a Lacedemonian. What wonder that a handful of such men checked the march of the greatest host that ever trod the earth.

• The courageous man is an example to the intrepid. His influence is magnetic. He creates an epidemic of nobleness. Men follow him, even to the death.

• The spirit of courage will transform the whole temper of your life.

“The hero,” says Emerson, “is the man who is immovably centred.”

“Not every vessel that sails from Tarshish will bring back the gold of Ophir. But shall it therefore rot in the harbor? No! Give its sails to the wind!”

• The inscription on the gates of Busyrane: “Be bold.” On the second gate: “Be bold, be bold, and ever more be bold;” the third gate: “Be not too bold.” Many a bright youth has accomplished nothing of worth simply because he did not dare to commence. Begin! Begin!! Begin!!!
• Invincible determination, and a right nature, are the levers that move the world.—PRESIDENT PORTER.
• When Grant was a boy he could not find “can’t” in the dictionary. It is the men who have no “can’t” in their dictionaries that make things move.

 

The greatest thing a man can do in this world is to make the most possible out of the stuff that has been given to him. This is success, and there is no other. It is not a question of what some one else can do or become, which every youth should ask himself, but what can I do? How can I develop myself into the grandest possible manhood?

 

“There is nobody,” says a Roman Cardinal, “whom Fortune does not visit once in his life: but when she finds he is not ready to receive her, she goes in at the door, and out through the window.” Opportunity is coy. The careless, the slow, the unobservant, the lazy fail to see it, or clutch at it when it has gone. The sharp fellows detect it instantly, and catch it when on the wing.

• Disraeli says that man is not the creature of circumstances, but that circumstances are the creatures of men. What has chance ever done in the world? Has it built any cities? Has it invented any telephones, any telegraphs? Has it built any steamships, established any universities, any asylums, any hospitals? Was there any chance in Caesar’s crossing the Rubicon? What had chance to do with Napoleon’s career, with Wellington’s, or Grant’s, or Von Moltke’s? Every battle was won before it was begun. What had luck to do with Thermopylae, Trafalgar, Gettysburg? Our successes we ascribe to ourselves; our failures to destiny.
• The indomitable will, the inflexible purpose, will find a way or make one. There is always room for a man of force. “He who has a firm will,” says Goethe, “moulds the world to himself.” “People do not lack strength,” says Victor Hugo, “they lack will.“

The youth who starts out in life determined to make the most of his eyes and let nothing escape him which he can possibly use for his own advancement; who keeps his ears open for every sound that can help him on his way, who keeps his hands open that he may clutch every opportunity, who is ever on the alert for everything which can help him to get on in the world, who seizes every experience in life and grinds it up into paint for his great life’s picture, who keeps his heart open that he may catch every noble impulse, and everything which may inspire him,—that youth will be sure to make his life successful; there are no “ifs” or “ands” about it. If he has his health, nothing can keep him from final success.

• No tyranny of circumstances can permanently imprison a determined will.
• “The general of a large army may be defeated,” said Confucius, “but you cannot defeat the determined mind of a peasant.”
• The youth should be taught that “he alone is great, who, by a life heroic, conquers fate;” that “diligence is the mother of good luck;” that, nine times out of ten, what we call luck or fate is but a mere bugbear of the indolent, the languid, the purposeless, the careless, the indifferent; that the man who fails, as a rule, does not see or seize his opportunity. Opportunity is coy, is swift, is gone, before the slow, the unobservant, the indolent, or the careless can seize her:—

But the failure to take the last few steps has made all the difference to them between failure, or mediocrity, and the longed-for success.

 

• There is no genius like that of holding on, and making continuous effort under difficulties. There are a thousand people who have talent to one who has grit. Brilliancy gives up, and talent gets disheartened before difficulty and lets go.
• I believe that more people fail from the lack of staying power than from almost anything else. Many are willing to pay any price to attain their ambition, except that of plain, downright hard work. They are willing to expend any amount of energy in scheming, in cunning devices or short-cuts and abridged methods; but the thought of many years of tedious, laborious endeavor, the sacrificing of a thousand and one little comforts and pleasures, seems to be too much for them.
• You must either lead or follow; you must either make the program or help carry it out. You can not do both if you expect to do anything big.

We Are Here To Do More

• Even if dimly, we are conscious that we owe something to the world, and that it is our duty to pay the debt. There is something within which protests against our living idle, purposeless lives; which tells us that our debt to the race is a personal one.
• It tells us that our message to humanity is not transferable; that we must deliver it ourselves. No matter how much money we may have, we don’t feel quite right unless we are doing our part of the world’s work.
• These promptings of humanity and the yearning of every normal man and woman for a fuller, completer life; the craving for expansion, for growth; the desire to objectify our life-visions, to give birth to the children of our brain, to exercise our inventiveness, our ingenuity, to express our artistic temperament, our talents, whatever they may be; the inherent, instinctive longing to become that which we were intended to be; to weave the life-pattern given us at birth—these are the impelling motives for a creative career.
• The great artist does not paint simply for a living, but because he must express that divine thing in him that is struggling for expression. He has an unconquerable desire to put upon canvas the picture that haunts his brain.
• The unborn creatures of the imagination of the artist, the author, the actor, the singer, struggling for expression, haunt them until they are made real. So the ambitions and ideals of the business man, the professional man, clamor for expression so long as he is able to continue in the game.
• But the higher type of man plays the game, from start to finish, for the love of achievement; because it satisfies his sense of duty, of justice; plays it because it will make him a larger, completer man; because it satisfies his passion for expansion, for growth. He plays the game for the training it gives, for the opportunity of self-expression. He feels that he has a message to deliver to mankind, and that he must deliver it like a man.
• Ease, leisure, comfort are nothing compared with the exhilaration which comes from achievement.
• The idea that a man, whatever his work in the world, should retire just because he has made enough money to live upon for the rest of his life is unworthy of a real man, who was made to create, to achieve, to go on conquering.
• Responsibility is a powerful developing factor of which the idle, aimless person never gets the advantage. Great responsibilities bring out great reserves to match them.
  • As Billie Jean King said, “Pressure is a privilege.” 

• The divine discontent which all aspiring souls feel is a longing for growth, for a realization of possibilities. It is the call of the potencies within us to do, to be; the longing for that expansion and power which can only come from healthful, vigorous activity in pursuit of a worthy aim.
• ‘A man is not old while he is doing things, and if he is not doing anything he is dead.’ Industry conduces to longevity. It is the ship at wharf, not the ship at sea, that rots the fastest;—the still pool, not the running brook, that stagnates. Honest, earnest endeavor tends to health of body and mind.”
• “It is the ship at wharf, not the ship at sea, that rots the fastest;—the still pool, not the running brook, that stagnates.”
  •  “Iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.”- Leonardo da Vinci 

Also Recover

• “Many think that all great achievement depends upon unceasing industry; that, if they keep everlastingly at it, if they are always at work, their accomplishment will be greater than if they work less and play more. There could not be a greater mistake. There is no greater delusion than that we can accomplish more by working a great many hours each day, straining mind and body to the limit of endurance, than by working fewer hours with less straining, less fatigue, but with greater freshness and intensity. First-class work is impossible to brains exhausted by lack of recreation and sleep.”

Slow Down, Enjoy

• With us the hurry habit has become almost a disease. We get so accustomed to the American pace that we can not slow down, even when we are not in a hurry. Our movements, habits, and manners give us the appearance of always being in a rush, and we hurry even when on a vacation.
• Whatever your lot in life, keep joy with you. It is a great healer.
• Half the misery in the world would be avoided if people would make a business of having plenty of fun at home, instead of running everywhere else in search of it.
• When you have had a perplexing day, when things have gone wrong with you and you go home at night exhausted, discouraged, blue, instead of making your home miserable by going over your troubles and trials, just bury them; instead of dragging them home and making yourself and your family unhappy with them and spoiling the whole evening, just lock everything that is disagreeable in your office.
• There is something abnormal, something wrong in the parent who is annoyed by the romping, the playing, the laughter of children. The probabilities are that his own child-life was suppressed. The man who would not grow old must keep in touch with young life.

 

It is not by leaps or bounds, but by steady, persistent growth that strong characters are made.

• There is nothing else that will give you greater satisfaction in after years than the forming of such systematic habits of self-culture early in life as to make your self-improvement processes automatic.
• We build our future, thought by thought, Or good or bad, and know it not— Yet so the universe is wrought. Thought is another name jor fate, Choose, then, thy destiny, and wait— For love brings love, and hate brings hate. —Ella Wheeler Wilcox.
• Think a moment. Are you not in command of something more delicate, more precious, than any ship—your own life, your own mind? How much attention are you giving to the steering of that mind? Don’t you let it go pretty much as it will?
• There can be no more important study, no higher duty owed to ourselves and those about us, than this of thought-control, of self-control, which results in self-development.
• M. E. Carter says: “If parents and guardians would devote their energies to teaching the young under their care the lesson of thought-control instead of laying so much stress upon—and enforcing obedience to—external authority, the problem of upbringing the rising generation would be wonderfully simplified, and a much higher order of human beings would soon appear upon this planet. The child taught to hold right thoughts and to expel wrong ones by governing its own mental realm needs less and less external authority, and will grow up pure-minded and truthful because of having nothing to hide, nothing to repress. Mental control is the only self-control, and those who learn it early escape unhappiness and many hard experiences which darken the lives of those who fail to learn that greatest of all life’s lessons.”

Our Worst Enemy Is Fear

• If we were all properly trained and were large enough to see that nothing outside of ourselves can work us harm, we would have no fear of anything.
• “One of the worst misfortunes which can possibly happen to a growing child is to have a mother who is perpetually tormented by nervous fears. If a mother gives way to fears—morbid, minute, and all-prevailing—she will inevitably make the environment of her children one of increasing dread and timidity. The background of fear is the habit or instinct of anticipating the worst. The mother who never makes a move, or allows her children to make a move, without conjuring up a myriad of malign possibilities, imbitters the cup of life with a slow-acting poison.
• Think of the wasted hours in which you planned what you would do if misfortune should come. If we could only rid ourselves of imaginary troubles, our lives would be infinitely happier and healthier.

Overcoming Fear

• Heaven never helps the man who will not act.—Sophocles.
• The talent of success is nothing more than doing what you can do well, and doing well whatever you do, without a thought of fame.—Longfellow.
• “I never did anything worth doing by accident,” he replied, “nor did any of my inventions come indirectly through accident, except the phonograph. No, when I have fully decided that a result is worth getting, I go about it, and make trial after trial, until it comes.”- Thomas Edison 
• “You lay down rather severe rules for one who wishes to succeed in life,” I ventured, “working eighteen hours a day.” “Not at all,” he said. “You do something all day long, don’t you? Every one does. If you get up at seven o’clock and go to bed at eleven, you have put in sixteen good hours, and it is certain with most men that they have been doing something all the time. They have been either walking, or reading, or writing, or thinking. The only trouble is that they do it about a great many things and I do it about one. If they took the time in question and applied it in one direction, to one object, they would succeed. Success is sure to follow such application. The trouble lies in the fact that people do not have an object—one thing to which they stick, letting all else go.”- Thomas Edison