Section 2 of Marion’s Notebook Entries: Remembered sayings and lessons are transcribed from the handwritten log of Marion Thomas Collins, Sr., my Dad. He recorded these instructions for living a good life over a fifty-year period.

Wok, Opportunities, Success, Leadership and Wealth
Chapter 2 - Section 2
Marion’s Notebook Entries

You will learn as much from failure as you can from success.
Credit cards can be a friend or your worst enemy. Pay no interest,
if possible. Try to use them only if you can pay when due.
Winners do what losers don’t want to do—work.
If you want the best things in life, remember the words—try, do, I will and persistence.
Each person has been given time to spend. All we have to do is use it well.
You can get by on charm for about 15 minutes. After that, you better know something.
When the deadline comes, it will be too late. So do it now.
Motivation is what gets you started; habit is what keeps you going.
There will come a time when you believe everything is finished—that will be the beginning.
Opportunities are often things you haven’t noticed the first time around.
The reward for work done well is the opportunity to do more.
Success without honor is an unseasoned dish. It will satisfy your hunger, but it just will not
taste good.
Blessed is the person who is too busy to worry in the daytime and too sleepy to worry at night.
Persistence is the key to success.
Be the task great or small; do it well or not at all.
As long as you do your best every job can be a learning experience.
The most important lesson from winning is that you can.
If a desire to succeed is so intense, no force on earth can stop it.
Privilege has responsibility—make sure you use it well.
The minute you settle for less than you deserve, you get even less than you settled for.
Achievement is largely the product of steadily raising your level of expectations.
When you’re committed to something, you accept no excuses only results.
Wise are those who learn that the bottom line doesn’t always have to be their top priority.
Determine that the thing can and shall be done, and then you will find the way to accomplish it.
Great success is built by turning negatives into positives.
There are two kinds of people—the ones that need to be told and the ones that figure it out for themselves.
A leader knows what is best to do—a manager merely knows how best to do it.
If the window of opportunity appears, don’t pull down the shade.
Find a job you love, and you’ll never have to work a day in your life.
It is easy to sit up and take notice in life. What is difficult is getting up and taking action.
To love what you do and feel that it matters—how could anything be more worthwhile?
If you can’t excel with talent, do it with more effort.
Opportunities are often things not noticed the first time you looked.
Not a single rich person is getting rich by exploiting his or her working labor force.
A leader’s role is to raise people’s aspirations for what they can
become and to release their energy so they will try to get there.
The will to win is not nearly as important as the will to prepare to win.
All men who have turned out worth anything have had the chief hand in their own education.
Opportunities are like the sunrise; if you wait too long, you will miss them.
Saving is like planting a garden. If you do not plant the seed, you will not get any food.
If you enjoy your work and your life, you are rich. If you are not happy with either, how can money help?
A window of opportunity won’t open itself. It takes a little help from you.
No matter how much money you make, you will always be poor if you spend more than you make. It is not what you earn, it is what you save.
Love what you do and feel that it matters.
Success is getting what you want; happiness is liking what you get.
A sense of humor is part of the art of leadership, of getting along with people, of getting things done.
Being defeated is often a temporary condition; giving up is what makes it permanent.

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