Eight Pillars of Prosperity

By James Allen

In Eight Pillars of Prosperity, James Allen expands on his beliefs that our thoughts and dreams determine the sort of person we will become. Here he reveals in great depth and detail the exact qualities we must meditate upon in order to achieve lasting success. He believed that prosperity rests on eight pillars: Energy, Economy, Integrity, System, Sympathy, Sincerity, Impartiality, and Self-reliance. "A business built up on the faultless practice of all these principles," Allen writes, "would be so firm and enduring as to be invincible. Nothing could injure it; nothing could undermine its prosperity, nothing could interrupt its success."

“The moral virtues are the foundation and support of prosperity as they are the soul of greatness. They endure forever, and all the works of man which endure are built upon them. Without them there is neither strength, stability, nor substantial reality, but only ephemeral dreams.” – James Allen

• Language: English
• Publisher: G&D Media
• Release date: Aug 11, 2019
• ISBN: 9781722523459

James Allen

Born in 1864 in England, James Allen took his first job at fifteen to support his family. Allen worked as a factory knitter and later a private secretary before writing his first book, From Poverty to Power, in 1901. In 1903 he completed his best-known work: As a Man Thinketh. Allen wrote nineteen books, including his spiritual journal, The Light of Reason, before he died at age forty-seven in 1912. While not widely known during his lifetime, Allen later came to be seen as a pioneer of contemporary inspirational literature.

Book preview

FIRST PILLAR

Energy

Energy is the working power in all achievement. Inert coal it converts to fire, and water it transmutes into steam; it vivifies and intensifies the commonest talent until it approaches to genius, and when it touches the mind of the dullard, it turns into a living fire that which before was sleeping in inertia.

Energy is a moral virtue, its opposing vice being laziness. As a virtue, it can be cultivated, and the lazy man can become energetic by forcibly arousing himself to exertion. Compared with the energetic man, the lazy man is not half alive. Even while the latter is talking about the difficulty of doing a thing, the former is doing it. The active man has done a considerable amount of work before the lazy man has roused himself from sleep. While the lazy man is waiting for an opportunity, the active man has gone out, met and utilized half-a-dozen opportunities. He does things while the other is rubbing his