Architects of Fate; Or, Steps to Success and Power

by Orison Swett Marden

PREFACE.

The demand for more than a dozen editions of "Pushing to the Front" during its first year and its universally favorable reception, both at home and abroad, have encouraged the author to publish this companion volume of somewhat similar scope and purpose. The two books were prepared simultaneously, and the story of the first, given in its preface, applies equally well to this.

Inspiration to character-building and worthy achievement is the keynote of the present volume, its object, to arouse to honorable exertion youth who are drifting without aim, to awaken dormant ambitions in those who have grown discouraged in the struggle for success, to encourage and stimulate to higher resolve those who are setting out to make their own way, with perhaps neither friendship nor capital other than a determination to get on in the world.

Nothing is so fascinating to a youth with high purpose, life, and energy throbbing in his young blood as stories of men and women who have brought great things to pass. Though these themes are as old as the human race, yet they are ever new, and more interesting to the young than any fiction. The cry of youth is for life! more life! No didactic or dogmatic teaching, however brilliant, will capture a twentieth-century boy, keyed up to the highest pitch by the pressure of an intense civilization. The romance of achievement under difficulties, of obscure beginnings and triumphant ends; the story of how great men started, their struggles, their long waitings, amid want and woe, the obstacles overcome, the final triumphs; examples, which explode excuses, of men who have seized common situations and made them great, of those of average capacity who have succeeded by the use of ordinary means, by dint of indomitable will and inflexible purpose: these will most inspire the ambitious youth. The author teaches that there are bread and success for every youth under the American flag who has the grit to seize his chance and work his way to his own loaf; that the barriers are not yet erected which declare to aspiring talent, "Thus far and no farther"; that the most forbidding circumstances cannot repress a longing for knowledge, a yearning for growth; that poverty, humble birth, loss of limbs or even eyesight, have not been able to bar the progress of men with grit; that poverty has rocked the cradle of the giants who have wrung civilization from barbarism, and have led the world up from savagery to the Gladstones, the Lincolns, and the Grants.

The book shows that it is the man with one unwavering aim who cuts his way through opposition and forges to the front; that in this electric age, where everything is pusher or pushed, he who would succeed must hold his ground and push hard; that what are stumbling-blocks and defeats to the weak and vacillating, are but stepping-stones and victories to the strong and determined. The author teaches that every germ of goodness will at last struggle into bloom and fruitage, and that true success follows every right step. He has tried to touch the higher springs of the youth's aspiration; to lead him to high ideals; to teach him that there is something nobler in an occupation than merely living-getting or money-getting; that a man may make millions and be a failure still; to caution youth not to allow the maxims of a low prudence, dinned daily into his ears in this money-getting age, to repress the longings for a higher life; that the hand can never safely reach higher than does the heart.

The author's aim has been largely through concrete illustrations which have pith, point, and purpose, to be more suggestive than dogmatic, in a style more practical than elegant, more helpful than ornate, more pertinent than novel.

The author wishes to acknowledge valuable assistance from Mr. Arthur W. Brown, of W. Kingston, R. I.

O. S. M.
43 BOWDOIN ST., BOSTON, MASS.
December 2, 1896.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER
I.	[WANTED—A MAN] God after a man. Wealth is nothing, fame is nothing. Manhood is everything.
II.	[DARE] Dare to live thy creed. Conquer your place in the world. All things serve a brave soul.
III.	[THE WILL AND THE WAY] Find a way or make one. Everything is either pusher or pushed. The world always listens to a man with a will in him.
IV.	[SUCCESS UNDER DIFFICULTIES] There is scarcely a great truth or doctrine but has had to fight its way to recognition through detraction, calumny, and persecution.
V.	[USES OR OBSTACLES] The Great Sculptor cares little for the human block as such; it is the statue He is after; and He will blast, hammer, and chisel with poverty, hardships, anything to get out the man.
VI.	[ONE UNWAVERING AIM] Find your purpose and fling your life out to it. Try to be somebody with all your might.
VII.	[SOWING AND REAPING] What is put into the first of life is put into the whole of life. Start right.
VIII.	[SELF-HELP] Self-made or never made. The greatest men have risen from the ranks.
IX.	[WORK AND WAIT] Don't risk a life's superstructure upon a day's foundation.
X.	[CLEAR GRIT] The goddess of fame or of fortune has been won by many a poor boy who had no friends, no backing, or anything but pure grit and invincible purpose to commend him.
XI.	[THE GRANDEST THING IN THE WORLD] Manhood is above all riches and overtops all titles; character is greater than any career.
XII.	[WEALTH IN ECONOMY] "Hunger, rags, cold, hard work, contempt, suspicion, unjust reproach, are disagreeable; but debt is infinitely worse than all."
XIII.	[RICH WITHOUT MONEY] To have nothing is not poverty. Whoever uplifts civilization is rich though he die penniless, and future generations will erect his monument.
XIV.	[OPPORTUNITIES WHERE YOU ARE] "How speaks the present hour? Act." Don't wait for great opportunities. Seize common occasions and make them great.
XV.	[THE MIGHT OF LITTLE THINGS] There is nothing small in a world where a mud-crack swells to an Amazon, and the stealing of a penny may end on the scaffold.
XVI.	[SELF-MASTERY] Guard your weak point. Be lord over yourself.