A day of worry is more exhausting than a week of work. Worry upsets our whole system; work keeps it in health and order.
Interpretation
Worry consumes more energy than actual work, negatively affecting our well-being.
This quote by Orison Swett Marden highlights the detrimental effects of worry on our mental and physical health. It suggests that the mental energy spent on worrying is far greater and more exhausting than the effort we put into our work, emphasizing that while work can be productive and beneficial, worry does nothing but disrupt our system and lead to fatigue.
In practice
In a motivational speech about mental health, one might say, 'Remember, a day of worry is more exhausting than a week of work, so focus on productivity instead of anxiety.'
Opportunity is latent in the very foundation of human society. Opportunity is everywhere about us. But the preparation to seize upon the opportunity, and to make the most of it, is to be made by every one for himself ... he will be self-made or never made.
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 - your ideal of what you long to attain - the ideal of health, efficiency, success.
You know from past experiences that whenever you have been driven to the wall, or thought you were, you have extricated yourself in a way which you never would have dreamed possible had you not been put to the test. The trouble is that in your everyday life you don't go deep enough to tap the divine mind within you.
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.
Something greater than wealth, grander even than fame β that manhood, character, stand for success, and that nothing else really does.
Many a man has finally succeeded only because he has failed after repeated efforts. If he had never met defeat he would never have known any great victory.
If you fall in love with an idea, you won't see the merits of alternative approaches-and will probably miss an opportunity or two. One of life's great pleasures is letting go of a previously cherished idea. Then you're free to look for new ones. What part of your idea are you in love with? What would happen if you kissed it goodbye?
Thus we may know that there are five essentials for victory: He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight. He will win who knows how to handle both superior and inferior forces. He will win whose army is animated by the same spirit throughout all its ranks. He will win who, prepared himself, waits to take the enemy unprepared. He will win who has military capacity and is not interfered with by the sovereign.
Experience is the only real teacher and if you keep a diary you get three bites at educating yourself - when it happens, when you write it down, and when you reread it and realise you were wrong. Making mistakes is part of life. The only things I would feel ashamed of would be if I had said things I hadn't believed in order to get on. Some politicians do do that.
One of the most responsible things you can do as an adult is to become more of a child.
It has long been recognized that an essential element in protecting human rights was a widespread knowledge among the population of what their rights are and how they can be defended.
Ideals are like the stars: we never reach them, but like the mariners of the sea, we chart our course by them.
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