How to Succeed

How to Succeed, by Orison Swett
Marden

The Project Gutenberg EBook of How to Succeed, by Orison Swett
Marden This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and
with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away
or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: How to Succeed or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune
Author: Orison Swett Marden
Release Date: February 3, 2007 [EBook #20513]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOW TO
SUCCEED ***

Produced by Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Karina Aleksandrova and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

Transcriber Notes:
1. Several misprints corrected. A complete list of corrections may be
found at the end of the text.

2. Symbol of a hand pointing right has been replaced with a right arrow:
==>.

HOW TO SUCCEED;
OR,
Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune.
[Illustration]
...BY...
ORISON SWETT MARDEN, A.M., M.D.
Author of
"Pushing to the Front; or, Success Under Difficulties," and "Architects
of Fate; or, Steps to Success and Power."
* * * * *
PUBLISHED BY THE CHRISTIAN HERALD, LOUIS KLOPSCH,
Proprietor, BIBLE HOUSE, NEW YORK.

Copyright, 1896, BY LOUIS KLOPSCH.

CONTENTS
CHAPTER. PAGE.
I. First, Be a Man, 5 II. Seize Your Opportunity, 14 III. How Did He
Begin? 27 IV. Out of Place, 49 V. What Shall I Do? 58 VI. Will You
Pay the Price? 66 VII. Foundation Stones, 81 VIII. The Conquest of
Obstacles, 99 IX. Dead in Earnest, 115 X. To Be Great, Concentrate,

128 XI. At Once, 140 XII. Thoroughness, 149 XIII. Trifles, 160 XIV.
Courage, 169 XV. Will Power, 183 XVI. Guard Your Weak Point, 192
XVII. Stick, 209 XVIII. Save, 220 XIX. Live Upward, 229 XX. Sand,
238 XXI. Above Rubies, 256 XXII. Moral Sunshine, 275 XXIII. Hold
Up Your Head, 287 XXIV. Books and Success, 296 XXV. Riches
Without Wings, 318

HOW TO SUCCEED.
CHAPTER I.
FIRST, BE A MAN.
The great need at this hour is manly men. We want no goody-goody
piety; we have too much of it. We want men who will do right, though
the heavens fall, who believe in God, and who will confess Him.
--REV. W. J. DAWSON.
All the world cries, Where is the man who will save us? We want a
man! Don't look so far for this man. You have him at hand. This
man--it is you, it is I; it is each one of us!... How to constitute one's self
a man? Nothing harder, if one knows not how to will it; nothing easier,
if one wills it. --ALEXANDER DUMAS.
"I thank God I am a Baptist," said a little, short Doctor of Divinity, as
he mounted a step at a convention. "Louder! louder!" shouted a man in
the audience; "we can't hear." "Get up higher," said another. "I can't,"
replied the doctor, "to be a Baptist is as high as one can get."
But there is something higher than being a Baptist, and that is being a
man.
Rousseau says: "According to the order of nature, men being equal,
their common vocation is the profession of humanity; and whoever is
well educated to discharge the duty of a man cannot be badly prepared
to fill any of those offices that have a relation to him. It matters little to

me whether my pupil be designed for the army, the pulpit, or the bar.
To live is the profession I would teach him. When I have done with
him, it is true he will be neither a soldier, a lawyer, nor a divine. Let
him first be a man; Fortune may remove him from one rank to another,
as she pleases, he will be always found in his place."
"First of all," replied the boy James A. Garfield, when asked what he
meant to be, "I must make myself a man; if I do not succeed in that, I
can succeed in nothing."
"Hear me, O men," cried Diogenes, in the market place at Athens; and,
when a crowd collected around him, he said scornfully, "I called for
men, not pigmies."
One great need of the world to-day is for men and women who are
good animals. To endure the strain of our concentrated civilization, the
coming man and woman must have an excess of animal spirits. They
must have a robustness of health. Mere absence of disease is not health.
It is the overflowing fountain, not the one half full, that gives life and
beauty to the valley below. Only he is healthy who exults in mere
animal existence; whose very life is a luxury; who feels a bounding
pulse throughout his body; who feels life in every limb,