Acres of Diamonds: Our Every-Day Opportunities
1890
This book began as a lecture Russell Conwell delivered over five thousand times to packed houses across America. It became one of the most widely read motivational books of the twentieth century, and its central allegory remains as devastating as the day Conwell first told it: a wealthy farmer named Ali Hafed sells his land to hunt for diamonds in distant lands, only to die in despair while a diamond mine is discovered on the very farm he abandoned. Conwell, founder of Temple University and one of the most celebrated orators of his era, builds from this devastating tale into a cascade of stories about people who failed to see the wealth literally beneath their feet, who chased distant visions while squandering the extraordinary opportunities already in their hands. The prose crackles with nineteenth-century rhetorical power, full of deliberate repetition and building emotional force. Yet its message transcends its era. We live in an age of curated Instagram lives and constant comparison to others; we are drowning in false scarcity while sitting on genuine abundance. This is a book for anyone who has ever looked enviously at someone else's life, career, or fortune while missing the singular value of their own circumstances. It demands you answer an uncomfortable question: what if everything you need is already right where you are?
Editions
X-Ray
“Your diamonds are not in far distant mountains or in yonder seas; they are in your own backyard, if you but dig for them.””
— Russell H. Conwell
“Begin where you are and what you are.””
— Russell H. Conwell
“Abraham Lincoln's principle for greatness can be adopted by nearly all. This was his rule: Whatsoever he had to do at all, he put his whole mind into it and held it all there until that was all done.””
— Russell H. Conwell
“It is easy to raise a laugh, but dangerous, for it is the greatest test of an orator's control of his audience to be able to land them again on the solid earth of sober thinking.””
— Russell H. Conwell
“True greatness is often unrecognized.””
— Russell H. Conwell
“You cannot trust a man with your money who cannot take care of his own.””
— Russell H. Conwell
“Do you ever see a man who struts around altogether too large to notice an ordinary working mechanic? Do you think he is great? He is nothing but a puffed-up balloon, held down by his big feet. There is no greatness there.””
— Russell H. Conwell
“It was chartered in 1888, at which time its numbers had reached almost six hundred, and it has ever since had a constant flood of applicants. "It has demonstrated," as Dr. Conwell puts it, "that those who work for a living have time for study." And he, though he does not himself add this, has given the opportunity. He feels especial pride in the features by which lectures and recitations are held at practically any hour which best suits the convenience of the students. If any ten students join in a request for any hour from nine in the morning to ten at night a class is arranged for them, to meet that request! This involves the necessity for a much larger number of professors and teachers than would otherwise be necessary, but that is deemed a slight consideration in comparison with the immense good done by meeting the needs of workers. Also President Conwell”
— Russell H. Conwell
“If the great men in America took our offices, we would change to an empire in the next ten years.””
— Russell H. Conwell
