Acres of Diamonds By Russell Conwell (Full Audiobook)
Read By Phil Chenevert

DISCLAIMER: This audio book is posted for your education and benefit. I do not agree with every aspect of it, but I believe that you can intelligently exercise your discernment to “separate the wheat from the chaff” in regards to what is accurate and inaccurate in this book. I hope that it is a blessing.

-Ryan Hicks, TaughtToProfit.com

“One of the most requested motivational lectures of all time. “I say that you ought to get rich, and it is your duty to get rich … The men who get rich may be the most honest men you find in the community. Let me say here clearly … ninety-eight out of one hundred of the rich men of America are honest. That is why they are rich. That is why they are trusted with money. That is why they carry on great enterprises and find plenty of people to work with them. It is because they are honest men. .” 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; look in your own backyard for those acres of diamonds. This theme is developed by an introductory anecdote, credited by Conwell to an Arab guide, about a man who wanted to find diamonds so badly that he sold his property and went off in futile search for them. The new owner of his home discovered that a rich diamond mine was located right there on the property. Conwell elaborates on the theme through examples of success, genius, service, or other virtues involving ordinary Americans contemporary to his audience: “dig in your own backyard!”. – Summary by the author

“Russell Herman 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, as the Pastor of The Baptist Temple, and for his inspirational lecture, Acres of Diamonds. He was born in South Worthington, Massachusetts, and was buried in the Founder’s Garden at Temple University…

The original inspiration for his most famous essay, “Acres of Diamonds”, occurred in 1869 when Conwell was traveling in the Middle East. The work began as a speech, “at first given,” wrote Conwell in 1913, “before a reunion of my old comrades of the Forty-sixth Massachusetts Regiment, which served in the Civil War and in which I was captain.” It was delivered as a lecture on the Chautauqua circuit prior to his becoming pastor of the Grace Baptist Church in Philadelphia in 1882 and was first published in book form in 1890 by the John Y. Huber Company of Philadelphia. Before his death in 1925, Conwell would come to deliver it over 6,152 times around the world.” – Wikipedia