Author in Qalma
Orison Swett Marden
1850–1924
Biography
Orison Swett Marden was orphaned before he was seven and grew up working on New England farms, sometimes sleeping in barns. He put himself through college, took degrees from Boston University and Harvard Medical School, built a chain of hotels in the 1880s, and lost everything in an economic collapse. He rebuilt, lost it again, and rebuilt again. Somewhere in that cycle he wrote Pushing to the Front, published in 1894, a sustained argument that the conditions a person is born into do not decide what they become. He went on to found Success Magazine in 1897.
Why Orison Swett Marden belongs in Qalma
Marden's whole subject was beginning again, daily, from wherever you are. An app with a fresh page every morning agrees with him.
“Begin to be now what you will be hereafter.”
Orison Swett Marden · Pushing to the Front · 1894
A reflection
This is a rejection of the postponed life: more patient once things settle, more present once the project is done. The logic of postponement is always persuasive and almost always wrong. The conditions that seem to stand between you and the real life are the real life. Think of one quality you intend to have someday, and practise its smallest expression today.
Source: Pushing to the Front, 1894.
Orison Swett Marden is one of the twelve voices in Qalma. Explore the daily reflection app, or return to the home page.
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