Russell H. Conwell

“ Your future stands before you like a block of unwrought marble. You can work it into what you will. Neither heredity, nor environment, nor any obstacles superimposed by man can keep you from marching straight through to success, provided you are guided by a firm, driving determination and have normal health and intelligence. ”

“ She had been told by those who loved her that a divorced woman would be shunned by all cultured women and be the butt of ridicule for fashionable men; and that as she must earn a living she should sew or embroider or act as a nurse. She certainly was too weak to wash clothes or care for a kitchen. But within her soul there was that yearning to do something worth while which seems given to almost every woman. Few women reach old age without feeling that somehow the great object of living has not been attained. ”

“ No victory so glorious to any man as that when he rises over his dead self and can shout with unwavering confidence, I WILL. That young man's battle was furious and a strain on body and soul; he kept saying over and over again, "I will solve that riddle." ”

“ All women in all countries are greatly in her debt. Men feel grateful for what the higher education of women has done for men. One cannot now walk over the embowered campus of Mount Holyoke College without meditating on what a forceful will of a frail woman, set toward the beautiful and good, can do within the severest limitations. Vassar, Wellesley, Smith, Bryn Mawr, and the thirty-five other colleges for women in Western and Southern states are the children of Mount Holyoke. One lone woman, one single will, a large heart! ”

“ Every one has within himself the tools necessary to carve out success. Consecrate yourself to some definite mission in life, and let it be a mission that will benefit the world as well as yourself. Remember that nothing can withstand the sweep of a determined will—unless it happens to be another will equally as determined. ”

“ But if a man has dilly-dallied through a certain space of wasted years, can he then develop the character—the motor force—to drive him to success? Why, my friend, will power cannot only be developed, but it is often dry powder which needs only a match. Very frequently I think of the life of Abraham Lincoln—that wonderful man! and I am thankful that I was permitted to meet him. Yet Abraham Lincoln developed the splendid sinews of his will after he was twenty-one. ”

“ They loaf about and trust in their lucky star, and boldly declare that the world owes them a living.
As a matter of fact the world owes a man nothing that he does not earn. In this life a man gets about what he is worth, and he must render an equivalent for what is given him. There is no such thing as inactive success.
My mind is running back over the stories of thousands of boys and girls I have known and known about, who have faced every sort of a handicap and have won out solely by will and perseverance in working with all the power that God had given them. ”

“ Of all the boys whom I have tried to help through college I cannot think of a single one who has failed for any other reason than ill health. But of course I have never helped any one who was not first helping himself. As soon as a man determines the goal toward which he is marching, he is in a strategic position to see and seize everything that will contribute toward that end. ”

“ This brings to my mind a certain stipulation which the ambition of youth must recognize. You must invest yourself or your money in a known demand. You must select an occupation that is fitted to your own special genius and to some actual want of the people. Choose as early as possible what your life-work will be. Then you can be continually equipping yourself by reading and observing to a purpose. There are many things which the average boy or girl learns in school that could be learned outside just as well.
Almost any man should be able to become wealthy in this land of opulent opportunity. ”

“ Determination is the battery that commands every road of life. It is the armor against which the missiles of adversity rattle harmlessly. If there is one thing I have tried peculiarly to do through these years it is to indent in the minds of the youth of America the living fact that when they give WILL the reins and say "DRIVE" they are headed toward the heights.
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The institution out of which Temple University, of Philadelphia, grew was founded thirty years ago expressly to furnish opportunities for higher education to poor boys and girls who are willing to work for it. ”

“ From that immortal hour when that little woman, peeling potatoes as her brother's housekeeper [Pg 32] at Buckland, Massachusetts, suddenly determined to start a movement for the higher education of young women, she had written, had traveled, had begged, had given all her inheritance, had visited colleges and schools, going incessantly, working, praying, appealing, until the material embodiment of her martyr sacrifices was opened to women. ”

“ The great Massachusetts Senator told Mr. Lincoln that there was just one man who could do that gigantic feat. The Senator said to Lincoln: "If that Congressman makes up his mind to do it, and it is left to him, he will do it. He is a careful man, but he has a will which seems to be irresistible." President Lincoln sent for the Congressman and said: "A railroad to California now will be more than an army, and it will be an army—in the saving of the Union. Will you build it?" ”

“ The most wonderful idea is quite valueless until it is put into practical operation. The Government rewards the man who first gets a patent or first puts his invention into practical use—and the world does likewise. Thus the dreamer must always lag behind the door.
True will power also predicates concentration. I shall never forget the time I went to see President Lincoln to ask him to spare the life of one of my soldiers who was sentenced to be shot. ”

“ A general may determine to win a victory, but if he hurls his troops across an open field straight into the [Pg 11] leaden sweep of the enemy's artillery he invites disaster and defeat. The best general lays his plans carefully, and advances his troops in the way that will best conserve their strength and numbers. So must a man plan his campaign of life.
No man has a right, either for himself or for others, to be at work in a factory, or a store, or anywhere else, unless he would work there from choice—money or no money—if he had the necessities of life. ”

“ Even Mazzini, the extremist, and both Cavour and Gavazzi finally came to accept Manin's demands for freedom and equality as they were set forth in the Constitution of the American Republic. Manin did not live to see the final union, nor to see his son a general in the Italian army, but his vigorous will gave a momentum to freedom in Italy which is still pressing the people on to his noblest ideals. "What man has done man can do," and what Manin did can be done again in other achievements. ”

“ Money in itself is a dynamic force for helping humanity.
In my lectures I have borne heavily on the fact that we are all walking over acres of diamonds and mines of gold. There are people who think that their fortune lies in some far country. It is much more likely to lie right in their own back yards or on their front door-step, hidden from their unseeing eye. Most of our millionaires discovered their fortunes by simply looking around them.
Recently I have been investigating the lives of four thousand and forty-three American millionaires. ”

“ A very large percentage of these came to Philadelphia without money, but firmly determined to get an education. I have never known one of them to go back defeated. Determination has the properties of a powerful acid; all shackles melt before it.
Conversely, lack of will power is the readiest weapon in the arsenal of failure. The most hopeless proposition in the world is the fellow who thinks that success is a door through which he will sometime stumble if he roams around long enough. ”

“ In a small town in western Massachusetts, forty years ago, a young, pale youth was acting as cashier of the savings bank. He was dyspeptic, acutely nervous, and often ill-natured. One day several large factories closed their doors, and the corporations to whom the bank had loaned money gave notice of bankruptcy. The president of the bank was in Europe and the people did not know that the bank was a loser by the failure. The cashier was almost overcome by the sense of danger, for he could not meet a run on the bank with the funds he had on hand. ”

“ What the reader desires is to learn how the will power in those discoverers worked out through hair-breadth escapes, long winters, and starvation's pangs. It is a great game, and the world is a grand stand. The man with the strongest will attracts the admiration of the world. All the world which loves a lover also admires a hero, and a hero is always a man of forceful will. ”

“ The biography of that great patriot and statesman, Daniel Manin of Venice, Italy, contains a very romantic example of the possibilities of will force. He was born in a poor quarter of the city; his parents were without rank or money. Venice in 1805 was under the Austrian rule and was sharply divided into aristocratic and peasant classes. He was soon deserted by his father and left to the support of his mother. He was a dull boy, and could not keep along with other boys in the church schools; his mind labored as slowly as did the childhood intellects of many of the greatest men of history. ”

“ All who succeed must fight that battle to victory at some time, or life is a failure. He who conquers himself can [Pg 47] conquer other men. He who does not rule himself cannot control other people. For the first time that boy was conscious of his lack of WILL. He was painfully ashamed. ”

“ Before leaving the subject of the power of the will, there is one thing I would like to say: a true will must have a decent regard for the happiness [Pg 21] of others. Do not get so wrapped up in your own mission that you forget to be kind to other people, for you have not fulfilled every duty unless you have fulfilled the duty of being pleasant. Enemies and ignorance are the two most expensive things in a man's life. I never make unnecessary enemies—they cost too much. ”

“ When the people discovered that this was one of the characteristics of the man, they elected him by one of the greatest [Pg 17] majorities ever given a Governor in Massachusetts.
Yet we must bear in mind that there is such a thing as overdoing anything. Young people should draw a line between study that secures wisdom and study that breaks down the mind; between exercise that is healthful and exercise that is injurious; between a conscientiousness that is pure and divine and a conscientiousness that is over-morbid and insane; between economy that is careful and economy that is stingy ”

“ No American boy can be handicapped like [Pg 23] that. But the children who learn slowly learn surely, and history, which is but the biography of great men, mentions again and again the fact that the great characters began to be able to acquire learning late in life. Napoleon and Wellington were both dull boys, and Lincoln often said that he was a dunce through his early years. Daniel Manin seems to have been utterly unable to learn from books until he was eight or ten years old. But his latent will power was suddenly developed to an unexpected degree when he was quite a youth. ”

“ When we read of Louis Joliet and James Marquette in their terrible experience tracing the Mississippi River—Indians as savage as wild beasts, marshes, lakes, forests, mountains, burdens, illness, wounds, exhaustion, seeming failures—all testify to their sublime strength of purpose. ”

“ General Washington said, "I will venture all on final victory," and General Grant said, "I will fight it out on this line." When Abraham Lincoln gave his eloquent tribute to Henry Clay [Pg 34] in 1852 he said, "Henry Clay's example teaches us that one can scarcely be so poor but that, if he will, he can acquire sufficient education to get through the world respectably." To such men log cabins were universities. Daniel Webster decided, at the end of his day's work plowing a stony field in the New Hampshire hills, that he would be a statesman. ”

“ Some folk never take the trouble to size themselves up—to find out what [Pg 12] they are fitted to do—and then wonder why they remain way down at the bottom of the heap. I remember a young woman who told me that she did not believe she could ever be of any particular use in the world. ”

“ Such is the intellectual force in a young person's mind. It is reasonable to conclude that no mind ever did its very best, and that no will power was ever exerted continuously to its greatest capacity. But the first essential in the making of noble character is to gain a full appreciation of the latent or unused force which each individual possesses. When one without foolish egotism realizes how much can be done with his wasting energies, then he must carefully consider to what object he will turn his power. ”

“ If perfection in a task can possibly be reached, nothing short of perfection is "well enough." Governor Talbot of Massachusetts got his high office because General Swift made a happy application of the truth in saying to the convention, "I nominate for Governor of this state a man who, when he was a farmer's boy, hoed to the end of the row." ”