Orison Swett Marden Excellence Quotations

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

Doing common things uncommonly well.

Make it a life-rule to give your best to whatever passes through your hands. Stamp it with your manhood. Let superiority be your trademark...

Superiority - doing things a little better than anybody else can do them.

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.

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.

Put the uncommon effort into the common task... make it large by doing it in a great way.

Aspiration lifts the life; groveling lowers it. When we are striving for excellence in everything we do the entire life grows and expands, but if we allow our standards to drop, there is a natural progression that follows, a tendency for a downward effort in all that we do thereafter.

Great men are but common men more fully developed and ripened.