Success Quote by Orison Swett Marden

Marden is trying to pry “success” loose from its most common hostage: the scoreboard. The first sentence lands like a paradox on purpose. “Achievement is not always success” punctures the modern reflex to treat milestones as proof of worth; “reputed failure often is” goes after the social mechanics of judgment, where reputation can mislabel a necessary detour as a defeat. He’s not denying outcomes matter. He’s insisting that outcomes are noisy data, distorted by timing, luck, and other people’s narratives.

The operative word is “reputed.” Marden flags failure as a public verdict, not an objective condition. That’s the subtext: the crowd’s interpretation is frequently wrong, and letting it define you is a kind of self-sabotage. In an era when industrial America was turning productivity into morality, this is a quiet act of resistance: character over spectacle, process over applause.

Then he pivots from clever inversion to creed. “Honest endeavor” and “persistent effort” sound devotional, almost muscularly Protestant, and that’s intentional. Marden’s world prized self-making; his writing helped build the template for motivational culture before it was a genre. The phrase “under any and all circumstances” broadens the ethic beyond ideal conditions, implying that the real test isn’t talent but steadiness when the environment is unfair, chaotic, or indifferent.

What makes it work is how it flatters without coddling. It offers dignity to people whose efforts don’t photograph well, while still demanding discipline. Success, in Marden’s frame, isn’t a trophy; it’s a standard of conduct.