Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill

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NOTE – Having completed reading this book somewhere in the beginning of the year 2024, I realized how powerful it is and each and every line is worth injecting into your veins. At first sight, these might seem random lines from nowhere, but if read with a serene mind, they are actually gold. So here I am, writing down my highlighted lines and paragraphs as motivation and lessons for the life of young and ever powerful Vidushi.

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Truly “thoughts are things”, and powerful things at that, when mixed with purpose, persistence, and burning desire for their translation into riches or other material objects.

Edwin C. Barnes had a burning desire to become a business associate of the great Thomas Edison.

He was so determined to find a way to carry out his desire that he finally decided to travel by “blind baggage” rather than be defeated.

Mr Edison said,

“When a man really desires a thing so deeply that he is willing to stake his entire future on a single turn of the wheel in order to get it, he is sure to win. I gave him the opportunity he asked for, because I saw he had made up his mind to stand by until he succeeded. Subsequent events proved that no mistake was made.”

Barnes was constantly intensifying his desire to become the business associate of Edison.

When one is truly ready for a thing, it puts in its appearance.

I came here to go into business with Edison and I’ll accomplish this end if it takes the remainder of my life.

What a different story people would have to tell if only they would adopt a definite purpose, and stand by that purpose until it had time to become an all consuming obsession!

Maybe young Barnes did not know it at the time, but his bulldog determination, his persistence with a single desire, was destined to mow down all opposition and bring him the opportunity he was seeking.

When the opportunity came, it appeared in a different form, and from a different direction than Barnes had expected.

That is one of the trick of opportunity. It has a sly habit of slipping in by the back door, and often comes disguised in the form of misfortune or temporary defeat. Perhaps this is why so many fail to recognize opportunity.

Out of that business association grew the slogan, “Made by Edison and installed by Barnes”.

He acquired the definite knowledge that an intangible impulse of thought can be transmuted into it’s physical counterpart by the application of known principles.

Barnes literally thought himself into a partnership with the great Edison! He thought himself into a fortune. He had nothing to start with, except the capacity to know what he wanted, and the determination to stand by that desire until he realized it.

He had no influence. But he did have initiative, faith and the will to win. With these intangible forces he made himself number one man with the greatest inventor who ever lived.

One of the most common causes of failure is the habit of quitting when one is overtaken by temporary defeat.

Gold fever

His calculation showed that the vein would be found just three feet from where Darbys had stopped drilling! That is exactly where it was found.

The junk man took millions of dollars in ore from the mine because he knew enough to seek expert counsel before giving up.

Quoting Darby

” I stopped three feet from gold, but I will never stop because men say ‘no’ when I ask them to buy insurance.” He owes his “stickability” to the lesson from from his “quitability” in the gold mining business.

Before success comes to most people, they are sure to meet with much temporary defeat, and perhaps some failure.

More than 500 of the most successful people America has ever known told the author their greatest success came just one step beyond the point at which defeat had overtaken them.

Failure is a trickster with a keen sense of irony and cunning. It takes great delight in tripping one up when success is almost within reach.

“No” does not necessarily mean no.

What do you want?

My mammy says send her fifty cents.

MY MAMMY’S GOTTA HAVE THAT FIFTY CENTS!

“What can you make of it? What strange power did that child use that so completely whipped my uncle?”