“Deep within man dwell these slumbering powers; powers that would astonish him…,forces that would revolutionize his life if aroused and put into action.”~Orison Swett Marden
“My daddy is very important” said a pretty little girl at a children’s party in Denmark; “he is in a very high office for the king. Some people’s last name ends in the letters “sen” and they will never amount to anything. We have to work hard to keep those kind of people down, because they are not related to aristocracy.
“But my papa can buy a hundred dollars’ worth of bonbons, and give them away to children,” angrily exclaimed the daughter of the rich merchant Petersen. “Can your papa do that?”
“Yes,” chimed in the daughter of an editor, “my papa can write about your papa and everybody’s papa in the newspaper. All sorts of people are afraid of him, my papa says, for he can do as he likes with the paper.”
“Oh, if I could be one of them!” thought a little boy peeping through the crack of the door, by permission of the cook for whom he had been turning the spit. But no, his parents had not even a penny to spare, and his name ended in “sen.”
Years afterwards when the children of the party had become men and women, some of them went to see a splendid house, filled with all kinds of beautiful and valuable objects. There they met the owner, once the very boy who thought it so great a privilege to peep at them through a crack in the door as they played. He had become the great sculptor Thorwaldsen.
This sketch is adapted from a story by a poor Danish cobbler’s son, another whose name did not keep him from becoming famous,—Hans Christian Andersen. With quotes from Orison Swett Marden
Ideas for success 
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