Augustine “Og” Mandino II (December 12, 1923 to September 3, 1996[1]) was an American author. He wrote the best-selling book “The Greatest Salesman in the World“. Over 50 million copies of his books have been sold and have been translated into over 25 languages. Up until 1976, he was the president of Performance Unlimited magazine and was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the National Speakers Association.

The key philosophical message of Mandino is that every person on earth is a miracle and should choose to guide their lives with confidence and in accordance with the laws directing abundance.

“Each day is a special gift from God, and while life may not always be fair, you must never allow the pains, hurdles, and handicaps of the moment to poison your attitude and plans for yourself and your future. You can never win when you wear the ugly cloak of self-pity, and the sour sound of whining will certainly frighten away any opportunity for success. Never again. There is a better way.”
― Og Mandino

“Build this day on a foundation of pleasant thoughts. Never fret at any imperfections that you fear may impede your progress. Remind yourself, as often as necessary, that you are a creature of God and have the power to achieve any dream by lifting up your thoughts. You can fly when you decide that you can. Never consider yourself defeated again. Let the vision in your heart be in your life’s blueprint. Smile”
― Og Mandino

“Treasure the love you receive above all. It will survive long after your good health has vanished.”
― Og Mandino

“Always seek out the seed of triumph in every adversity.”
― Og Mandino

“Never again clutter your days or nights with so many menial and unimportant things that you have no time to accept a real challenge when it comes along. This applies to play as well as work. A day merely survived is no cause for celebration. You are not here to fritter away your precious hours when you have the ability to accomplish so much by making a slight change in your routine. No more busy work. No more hiding from success. Leave time, leave space, to grow. Now. Now! Not tomorrow”
― Og Mandino

“Love doesn’t sit there like a stone, it has to be made, like bread: remade all the time, made new”
― Og Mandino

“Let your actions always speak for you, but be forever on guard against the terrible traps of false pride and conceit that can halt your progress. The next time you are tempted to boast, just place your fist in a full pail of water, and when you remove it, the hole remaining will give you a correct measure of your importance.”
― Og Mandino

“There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.”
― Og Mandino

“The great difference between those who succeed and those who fail does not consist in the amount of work done by each but in the amount of intelligent work. Many of those who fail most ignominiously do enough to achieve grand success but they labor haphazardly at whatever they are assigned, building up with one hand to tear down with the other. They do not grasp circumstances and change them into opportunities. They have no faculty for turning honest defeats into telling victories. With ability enough and ample time, the major ingredients of success, they are forever throwing back and forth an empty shuttle and the real web of their life is never woven.”
― Og Mandino

“The weakest living creature, by concentrating his powers on a single object, can accomplish good results while the strongest, by dispersing his effort over many chores, may fail to accomplish anything. Drops of water, by continually falling, hone their passage through the hardest of rocks but the hasty torrent rushes over it with hideous uproar and leaves no trace behind.”
― Og Mandino

“It is those who concentrate on but one thing at a time who advance in this world. The great man or woman is the one who never steps outside his or her specialty or foolishly dissipates his or her individuality.”
― Og Mandino

“There is an immeasurable distance between late and too late.”
― Og Mandino

“I am rare, and there is value in all rarity; therefore, I am valuable.”
― Og Mandino

“I am here for a purpose and that purpose is to grow into a mountain, not to shrink to a grain of sand. Henceforth will I apply ALL my efforts to become the highest mountain of all and I will strain my potential until it cries for mercy.”
― Og Mandino

“Work as though you would live forever, and live as though you would die today. Go another mile!”
― Og Mandino

“I will form good habits and become their slave. And how will I accomplish this difficult feat? Through these scrolls it will be done, for each scroll contains a principle which will drive a bad habit from my life and replace it with one which will bring me closer to success.”
― Og Mandino

“Obstacles are necessary for success because in selling, as in all careers of importance, victory comes only after many struggles and countless defeats.”
― Og Mandino

“One of the things is we tend to give up too soon. We get knocked down a couple of times, and we stay down. It’s so important to get back up again.”
― Og Mandino

“Welcome every morning with a smile. Look on the new day as another special gift from your Creator, another golden opportunity to complete what you were unable to finish yesterday. Be a self-starter. Let your first hour set the theme of success and positive action that is certain to echo through your entire day. Today will never happen again. Don’t waste it with a false start or no start at all. You were not born to fail.”
― Og Mandino

“Today, and every day, deliver more than you are getting paid to do. The victory of success will be half won when you learn the secret of putting out more than is expected in all that you do. Make yourself so valuable in your work that eventually you will become indispensable. Exercise your privilege to go the extra mile, and enjoy all the rewards you receive. You deserve them.”
― Og Mandino

“Search for the seed of good in every adversity. Master that principle and you will own a precious shield that will guard you well through all the darkest valleys you must traverse. Stars may be seen from the bottom of a deep well when they cannot be discerned from the mountaintop. So will you learn things in adversity that you would never have discovered without trouble? There is always a seed of good. Find it and prosper.”
― Og Mandino

“The victory of success is half won when one gains the habit of setting goals and achieving them. Even the most tedious chore will become endurable as you parade through each day convinced that every task, no matter how menial or boring, brings you closer to fulfilling your dreams.”
― Og Mandino

“There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.”
― Og Mandino

“I will act now. I will act now. I will act now. Henceforth, I will repeat these words each hour, each day, every day, until the words become as much a habit as my breathing, and the action which follows becomes as instinctive as the blinking of my eyelids. With these words, I can condition my mind to perform every action necessary for my success. I will act now. I will repeat these words again and again and again. I will walk where failures fear to walk. I will work when failures seek rest. I will act now for now is all I have. Tomorrow is the day reserved for the labor of the lazy. I am not lazy. Tomorrow is the day when the failure will succeed. I am not a failure. I will act now. Success will not wait. If I delay, success will become wed to another and lost to me forever. This is the time. This is the place. I am the person.”
― Og Mandino

“One of the great undiscovered joys of life comes from doing everything one attempts to the best of one’s ability. There is a special sense of satisfaction, a pride in surveying such a work, a work which is rounded, full, exact, complete in its parts, which the superficial person who leaves his or her work in a slovenly, slipshod, half-finished condition, can never know. It is this conscientious completeness that turns any work into art. The smallest task, well done, becomes a miracle of achievement”
― Og Mandino

“Pay less attention to what you HEAR about someone, and more to what you LEARN about them… as you make the EFFORT.”
― Og Mandino

“I seek constantly to improve my manners and graces, for they are the sugar to which all are attracted.”
― Og Mandino

“Whenever you make a mistake or get knocked down by life, don’t look back at it too long. Mistakes are life’s way of teaching you. Your capacity for occasional blunders is inseparable from your capacity to reach your goals. No one wins them all, and your failures, when they happen, are just part of your growth. Shake off your blunders. How will you know your limits without an occasional failure Never quit. Your turn will come.”
― Og Mandino

“Always do your best. What you plant now, you will harvest later.”
― Og Mandino

“Always reward your long hours of labor and toil in the very best way, surrounded by your family. Nurture their love carefully, remembering that your children need models, not critics, and your own progress will hasten when you constantly strive to present your best side to your children. And even if you have failed at all else in the eyes of the world, if you have a loving family, you are a success.”
― Og Mandino

“All your problems, discouragements, and heartaches are, in truth, great opportunities in disguise.”
― Og Mandino

“To do anything truly worth doing, I must not stand back shivering and thinking of the cold and danger, but jump in with gusto and scramble through as well as I can.”
― Og Mandino

“There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.”
― Og Mandino