Excerpt taken from Og Mandino’s The Greatest Salesman in the World Part II The End of the Story Part 2

Continues…

Now I know that patience and time can do more than even strength and passion. The years of frustration

are ready to be harvested. All that I have managed to accomplish, and all that I hope to accomplish, has

been and will be by that plodding, patient, persevering process which builds the ant heap, particle by

particle, thought by thought, step by step.

Success, when it comes overnight, often departs with the dawn. I am prepared, now, for a lifetime of

happiness because I have finally recognized a powerful secret hidden in the years that treated me so

harshly. Failure is, in a sense, the highway to success, inasmuch as every discovery we make of what is

false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true and every fresh experience points out some form of

error which we shall afterward carefully avoid. The path I walked, often dampened by my tears, has not

been a wasted journey.

Excerpt taken from Og Mandino’s The Greatest Salesman in the World Part II The End of the Story Part 1

I was born to succeed, not fail.

I was born to triumph, not to bow my head in defeat.

I was born to toast victories, not to whimper and whine.

What happened to me? When did my dreams all fade into a grey mediocrity where average people

applaud each other as excellent?

No person is ever so much deceived by another, as by himself. The coward is convinced that he is only

being cautious and the miser always thinks he is practicing frugality. Nothing is so easy as to deceive

one’s self since what we wish is always easy to believe. No one, in my life, has deceived me as much as I

have.

Why do I always try to cover my small accomplishments under blankets of words that make light of my

work or excuses for my lack of ability? Worst of all, I have come to believe my excuses so that I willingly

sell my days for pennies while consoling myself with thoughts that things could always be worse.

No more!

It is time to study the reflection in my looking glass until I recognize that the most harmful enemy that I

have . . . is me. At last, in this magic moment with my first scroll, the veil of self-deceit is beginning to lift

from my eyes.