James Allen, 1903. Complete text.
Seven short essays, under eight thousand words in total, and almost every line has been quoted by someone since. Allen called it a slim volume and said he had nothing to add to it, which was true.
The argument is that character is the sum of thought, circumstance grows out of character, and no one is ever placed by chance. It is the least ornamented statement of that idea in English, which is why it survived while more elaborate books of the same decade did not.
Read Visions And Ideals last and slowly. It is the passage that most of the modern quotation trade draws from, usually in fragments that lose Allen's qualification that the vision must be worked toward, not waited for.
Transcribed from the Project Gutenberg edition. First published in 1903 and long out of copyright worldwide.