Orison Swett Marden

Do not give up your dream because it is apparently not being realized, because you cannot 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.

Circumstances have rarely favored great men. A lowly beginning is no bar to a great career. The boy who works his way through college may have a hard time of it, but he will learn how to work his way in life, and will usually take higher rank in school and in after life than his classmate who is the son of a millionaire.

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.

There is only one thing for us to do, and that is to do our level best right where we are every day of our lives; To use our best judgment, and then to trust the rest to that Power which holds the forces of the universe in his hands.

Character is the indelible mark that determines the only true value of all people and all their work.

True economy means the wisest expenditure of what we have, everything considered, looking at it from the broadest standpoint. It is not a good thing to save a nickel at the expenditure of twenty-five cents' worth of time.

The true doctrine is that labor - systematic, effective, congenial labor - is not only a necessity, but is the source of the highest enjoyment.

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.

If you would attract good fortune, you must get rid of doubt. As long as that stands between you and your ambition, it will be a bar that will cut you off. You must have faith. No man can make a fortune while he is convinced that he can't.

What is enthusiasm but a passionate belief in what seems to be a high and holy aim - an unselfish devotion to some noble cause - a consecration of heart and mind and soul to the attainment of a great object?

It is every one's sacred duty to keep himself in a condition to do the biggest thing possible to him.

Poverty itself is not so bad as the poverty thought. It is the conviction that we are poor and must remain so that is fatal.