The Classic Pamela Positive: \”It Is the Open-Mindedness to Little Things That Brings Human Success.\” —Russell Conwell

\”It Is the Open-Mindedness to Little Things That Brings Human Success.\”

—Russell Conwell

What a wonderful story which shows how we can all be resourceful. We can figure out a different way to achieve even our smallest needs, and maintain a positive outlook. Look up, look around, and use what you see!

It\’s there for us all… It\’s already been provided.

I said to a relative of mine, who was a professor at Harvard:
\”I was cold all the time I was there, and I shivered so that my teeth shook\”.
Said he: \”Why did you shiver?\”
\”Because it was cold.\”

\”No, that is not the reason you shivered.\”
Then I said: \”I shivered because I had not bed-clothes enough.\”
\”No, that is not the reason.\”

\”Well,\” said I, \”Professor, you are a scientific man. I am not.
I would like to have an expert, scientific opinion now,
why I shivered.\”

He arose in his own way and said:
\”Young man, you shivered because you did not know any better!
Didn\’t you have in your pocket a newspaper?\”
\”Oh, yes, I had a \”Herald\” and a \”Journal\”.

\”That is it. You had them in your pocket, and if you had spread one
newspaper over your sheet when you went to bed, you would have
been as warm as you lay there, as the richest man in America under
all his silk coverlids.

But you shivered because you didn\’t know enough
to put a two-cent newspaper on your bed, and you had it in your pocket.\”

It is the open-mindedness to little things that brings human success.

Russell Conwell (February 15, 1843 – December 6, 1925) was an American Baptist minister, orator, philanthropist, lawyer, and writer. He is best remembered as the founder and first president of Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and for his inspirational lecture Acres of Diamonds. The son of Massachusetts farmers, Conwell attended Yale University and after graduating enlisted in the Union Army during the American Civil War. He was ordained as a Baptist minister in 1880, and delivered his famous speech “Acres of Diamonds” over 6,000 times around the world. The central idea of the work is that one need not look elsewhere for opportunity, achievement, or fortune – the resources to achieve all good things are present in one’s own community. Conwell’s capacity to establish Temple University and his other civic projects largely derived from the income that he earned from the speech. The published version has been regarded as a classic of New Thought literature since the 1870s.