Russell Herman Conwell the author of Acres of Diamonds was the founder and first president of Temple University in Philadelphia Pennsylvania.

Russell Conwell served as a Captain, at the age of 20, in the Union Army during the American Civil War becoming a lawyer following the war. He travelled widely around the world. Before founding Temple University he was journalist, writer,and Baptist minister.

Russell Conwell was an outstanding orator and it was his lecture Acres of Diamonds was delivered across the Unted States in more than 6,000 lectures. This lecture was published and remains a best seller.

Russell Conwell was born on February 15, 1843 in South Worthington, Massachusetts. He died December 6, 1925 and was buried in Founder’s Garden at Temple University.

Temple University has an excellent biography of Russell Conwell.

You can download the Acres of Diamonds ebook.

Wallace Delois Wattles is author of the prosperity classic The Science of Getting Rich a down-to-earth, clear-cut and practical guide – a mental and spiritual approach on how to become rich.

No bones about it, when you follow the thoughts presented in The Science of Getting Rich, you too will become rich, without the feelings of guilt. As a matter of fact, Wallace Wattles writes that the poverty-stricken (and even the middle class) should be the ones to feel guilty by not living up to their true potential as Thinking Beings.

Wallace Wattles also wrote Health Through New Thought and Fasting, The Science of Being Great, The Science of Being Well, and a novel, Hellfire Harrison.

Little is known about Wallace Wattles’ life. He was born in the USA shortly after the civil war, and experienced much failure in his earlier years. Later in his life he took to studying the various religious beliefs and philosophies of the world including those of Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Schopenhauer, Hegel, Emerson, and others.

It was through his tireless study and experimentation that he discovered the truth of New Thought principles and put them into practice in his own life. He began to write books outlining these principles. He practiced the technique of creative visualisation and as his daughter Florence relates,

“He wrote almost constantly. It was then that he formed his mental picture. He saw himself as a successful writer, a personality of power, an advancing man, and he began to work toward the realization of this vision. He lived every page … His life was truly the powerful life.”

Wattles died not long after the 1910 publication of The Science of Getting Rich, but his books, along with those of another well-known prosperity writer of that time, Orison Swett Marden, have had a remarkable effect on people, and much of the success and self-development literature of the past 100 years by the likes of Napoleon Hill, Robert Schuller, Anthony Robbins, etc., owes a great debt to these two writers.

Download your copy of The Science of Getting Rich today.

Napoleon Hill has, perhaps, been the most influential man in the area of personal success technique development through his classic books Think and Grow Rich and The Law of Success Course in Sixteen Lessons that have helped million of the people and has been important in the life of many successful people such as W. Clement Stone and Og Mandino.

Hill was born in 1883 in a one-room cabin on the Pound River in Wise County, Virginia. He began his writing career at age 13 as a “mountain reporter” for small town newspapers and went on to become America’s most beloved motivational author.

Hill passed away in November 1970 after a long and successful career writing, teaching, and lecturing about the principles of success.

His work stands as a monument to individual achievement and is the cornerstone of modern motivation, of leadership, self-motivation, and individual achievement.

Quotes from Napoleon Hill

“Understand this law and you will then know, beyond room for the slightest doubt, that you are constantly punishing yourself for every wrong you commit and rewarding yourself for every act of constructive conduct in which you indulge.”

“Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul, the blueprints of your ultimate achievements.”

“Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit.”

“Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed on an equal or greater benefit.”

“Hold a picture of yourself long and steadily enough in your mind’s eye, and you will be drawn toward it.”

“If you do not conquer self, you will be conquered by self.”

“One must marry one’s feelings to one’s beliefs and ideas. That is probably the only way to achieve a measure of harmony in one’s life.”

“The ladder of success is never crowded at the top.”

“The majority of men meet with failure because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those which fail.”

Download your copy of Think and Grow Rich
or The Law of Success Course in Sixteen Lessons today.

In The Master Key System Haanel put into writing the ideas and methods he used to gain his success and achieve goals. As well as The Master Key System, which he wrote in 1912, he also wrote Mental Chemistry and The New Psychology.

Charles F. Haanel was born on May 22, 1866 in Ann Arbor, Michigan to Hugo and Emeline Haanel. He started his business career as an office boy for a company in St. Louis at which he stayed for fifteen years. Yearning for a better life, he resigned his position in order to start his own company.

In 1898, Mr. Haanel convinced investors that Tehuantepee, New Mexico would be a prime place to initiate the growth of sugar and coffee. He was made president of this venture. From the start it was successful. It grew in value greatly and made all of the investors and Haanel wealthy. Mr. Haanel formed the Continental Commercial Company in 1905, which included the sugar and coffee plantation as well as six additional companies that were absorbed into the whole. At the time, it was one of the largest conglomerates in the world with a value of $2.5 million.

Building upon those successes, Mr. Haanel formed many other companies that added to his wealth: The Sacramento Valley Improvement Company, vineyards, and a mining company. He was president of all the ventures and was responsible for their success and growth.

Family

Mr. Haanel married Miss Esther M. Smith in 1885 and had one son and two daughters. His wife died in 1901 and in 1908 he remarried to Miss Margaret Nicholson. According to sources, his daughters are still living.

Memberships

Beside his business interests, Mr. Haanel was a member of the Keystone Lodge, the Authors’ League of America, the American Society of Psychical Research, the St. Louis Humane Society, the St. Louis Chamber of Commerce, and the Science League of America. He was a thirty-second degree Mason, a Shriner, and a member of the Missouri Athletic Club, as well.

According to a short biography of him (from which much of this article derived its facts) in St. Louis—History of the Fourth City by Walter B. Stevens, “He is a man of mature judgement, capable of taking a calm survey of life and correctly valuing its opportunities, its possibilities, its demands and obligations.”

Death

Mr. Haanel died on November 27, 1949 at the age of 83. He was buried in Bellefontaine Cemetery, St. Louis. By taking an overview of Mr. Haanel’s life, it becomes clear how the tenets written in The Master Key System guided Mr. Haanel. He not only wrote what he thought—Mr. Haanel wrote what he lived.

Download your copy of The Master Key System now!

Allen’s work embodies the influence of Protestant liberalism on the one hand and of Buddhist thought on the other. For example, the Buddha teaches, “All that we are is the result of what we have thought.” Allen’s Biblical text says, “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.”

Allen insists upon the power of the individual to form his own character and to create his own happiness. “Thought and character are one,” he says, “and as character can only manifest and discover itself through environment and circumstance, the outer conditions of a person’s life will always be found to be harmoniously related to his inner state. This does not mean that a man’s circumstances at any given time are an indication of his entire character, but that those circumstances are so intimately connected with some vital thought element within him that, for the time being, they are indispensable to his development.”

Allen starts us thinking – even when we would rather be doing something else. He tells us how thought leads to action. He shows us how to turn our dreams into realities.

His is a philosophy that has brought success to millions. It is the philosophy of Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking and of Joshua Liebman’s Peace of Mind.

Allen’s message is one of hope even in the midst of confusion. “Yes,” he says, “humanity surges with uncontrolled passion, is tumultuous with ungoverned grief, is blown about by anxiety and doubt. Only the wise man, only he whose thoughts are controlled and purified, makes the winds and the storms of the soul obey him.”

“Tempest-tossed souls,” Allen continues, “wherever you may be, under whatsoever conditions you may life, know this – in the ocean of life the isles of blessedness are smiling and the sunny shore of your ideal awaits your coming….”

James Allen, author of As A Man Thinketh, was born in Leicester, England in 1864 and worked as a personal secretary for an executive of a large English corporation until 1902. At the age of 38 he “retired” to writing and moved with his wife to a small cottage at Ilfracombe, England. He penned more than 20 works before suddenly passing away at the age of 48.