Great Throughts Treasury

"Obstacles will look large or small to you according to whether you are large or small."

"Opportunities? They are all around us ... There is power lying latent everywhere waiting for the observant eye to discover it. "

"Obstacles are like wild animals. They are cowards but they will bluff you if they can. If they see you are afraid of them, they are liable to spring upon you; but if you look them squarely in the eye, they will slink out of sight."

"Power gravitates to the man who knows how."

"Our thoughts and imagination are the only real limits to our possibilities."

"Success is not measured by what you accomplish but by the opposition you have encountered, and the courage with which you have maintained the struggle against overwhelming odds. "

"Success is the child of drudgery and perseverance. It cannot be coaxed or bribed; pay the price and it is yours."

"Resolve that whatever you do, you will bring the whole man to it; that you will fling the whole weight of your being into it."

"The best thing about giving of ourselves is that what we get is always better than what we give. The reaction is greater than the action."

"Talk happiness. The world is sad enough without your woe."

"The glow of satisfaction which follows the consciousness of doing our level best never comes to a human being from any other experience."

"The greatest thing a man can do in this world is to make the most possible out of the stuff that has been given him. This is success, and there is no other."

"The hand cannot reach higher than does the heart."

"The golden rule for every business man is this: ''Put yourself in your customer's place.''"

"The influential man is the successful man, whether he be rich or poor."

"The Creator has not given you a longing to do that which you have no ability to do"

"The lack of opportunity is ever the excuse of a weak, vacillating mind. Opportunities! Every life is full of them. Every newspaper article is an opportunity. Every client is an opportunity. Every sermon is an opportunity. "

"The man who has no money is poor, but one who has nothing but money is poorer. He only is rich who can enjoy without owning; he is poor who though he has millions is covetous."

"There can be no failure to a man who has not lost his courage, his character, his self-respect, or his self-confidence. He is still a King."

"The universe is one great kindergarten. Everything that exists has brought with it its own peculiar lesson. The mountain teaches stability and grandeur; the ocean immensity and change. Forests, lakes, and rivers, clouds and winds, stars and flowers, stupendous glaciers and crystal snowflakes every form of animate or inanimate existence, leaves its impress upon our soul. "

"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."

"There is an infinite difference between a little wrong and just right, between fairly good and the best, between mediocrity and superiority."

"There is no failure for the man who realizes his power, who never knows when he is beaten; there is no failure for the determined endeavor; the unconquerable will. There is no failure for the man who gets up every time he falls."

"There is no investment you can make which will pay you so well as the effort to scatter sunshine and good cheer through your establishment."

"There can be no great courage where there is no confidence or assurance, and half the battle is in the conviction that we can do what we undertake."

"There is no medicine like hope, no incentive so great, and no tonic so powerful as expectation of something tomorrow. "

"There is something greater than wealth, grander even than fame. Manhood and character stand for success - nothing else really does."

"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."

"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."

"This is the test of your manhood: How much is there left in you after you have lost everything outside of yourself?"

"We cannot rise higher than our thought of ourselves. "

"We advance on our journey only when we face our goal, when we are confident and believe we are going to win out."

"Unless you are prepared yourself to profit by your chance, the opportunity will only make you ridiculous. A great occasion is valuable to you in proportion as you have educated yourself to make use of it."

"We fail to see that we can control our destiny; make ourselves do whatever is possible; make ourselves become whatever we long to be."

"We lift ourselves by our thought. We climb upon our vision of ourselves. If you want to enlarge your life, you must first enlarge your thought of it and of yourself. Hold the ideal of yourself as you long to be, always everywhere."

"We must give more in order to get more. It is the generous giving of ourselves that produces the generous harvest."

"What a great discrepancy there is between men and the results they achieve! It is due to the difference in their power of calling together all the rays of their ability, and concentrating them upon one point."

"What keeps so many employers back is simple unwillingness to pay the price, to make the exertion, the effort to sacrifice their ease and comfort."

"We make the world we live in and shape our own environment."

"We win half the battle when we make up our minds to take the world as we find it, including the thorns."

"Whatever our creed, we feel that no good deed can by any possibility go unrewarded, no evil deed unpunished."

"What power can poverty have over a home where loving hearts are beating with a consciousness of untold riches of the head and heart?"

"When we are sure that we are on the right road there is no need to plan our journey too far ahead. No need to burden ourselves with doubts and fears as to the obstacles that may bar our progress. We cannot take more than one step at a time. "

"When a man feels throbbing within him the power to do what he undertakes as well as it can possibly be done, and all of his faculties say amen to what he is doing, and give their unqualified approval to his efforts. This is happiness, this is success."

"Work, love and play are the great balance wheels of man's being."

"Wisdom is knowledge which has become a part of one's being."

"You will always have to live with yourself, and it is to your best interest to see that you have good company -- a clean, pure, straight, honest, upright, generous, magnanimous companion."

"You cannot measure a man by his failures. You must know what use he makes of them. What did they mean to him? What did he get out of them?"

"You have not found your place until all your faculties are roused and your whole nature consents and approves of the work you are doing."

"You will never succeed while smarting under the drudgery of your occupation, if you are constantly haunted with the idea that you could succeed better in something else."