Og Mandino wraps discipline in a parable so simple that I almost distrusted it at first. Then the book keeps tapping you on the shoulder, annoyingly calm and annoyingly right.
What stayed with me is the rhythm of repetition. The scrolls are not there to impress anyone with novelty; they are there to wear a useful idea into the nervous system until it starts behaving like character.
I also like that the selling begins before the customer appears. You have to sell yourself on your own direction first. Otherwise the world receives the usual discounted merchandise: hesitation with nice packaging.
It is old-school, a little theatrical, and completely allergic to irony. Fine. Some lessons survive precisely because they are blunt enough to keep working after the fashionable language around them has died.
I would not call it sophisticated, and I do not think it wants to be. Its strength is ritual: repeat the right idea often enough and eventually your excuses start feeling underdressed.