Success Quote by Benjamin Jowett

Sales, in Jowett's framing, is less a transaction than a posture of the soul. The line reads like proto-positive-thinking, but coming from a Victorian theologian it’s doing a subtler kind of work: translating faith into a usable, worldly discipline. "Success minded" isn’t just pep talk. It’s a prescription for an inner weather system that has to be sunny enough to make other people trust you.

The intent is practical: confidence sells because uncertainty leaks. Jowett understands that selling is an interpersonal ritual where the buyer is scanning for cues - not only about the product, but about the seller’s credibility and self-command. If you "feel that things are coming your way", you project ease, momentum, inevitability. That becomes contagious. The subtext is almost Augustinian: belief precedes action. You don’t wait for evidence of success; you act as if you’re already in its current, and that belief shapes your behavior until it becomes its own evidence.

Context sharpens the edge. Jowett lived in an era when capitalism was professionalizing persuasion and Victorian moral culture was anxious about it. By casting the salesman’s mindset as a moral requirement ("you've got to"), he domesticate selling into the language of vocation: the right interior state makes the outward practice legitimate. There’s irony here too - a theologian endorsing a self-fulfilling psychology that flirts with superstition. Yet it works because it names an uncomfortable truth: in markets, confidence often functions as a surrogate for certainty, and faith is sometimes just strategy with a cleaner conscience.