Phineas Taylor "P. T." Barnum (1810–91) formed the circus that came to be known as The Greatest Show on Earth. A brash, larger-than-life entrepreneur, he transformed the nature of commercial entertainment in the 19th century, from his private museum of curiosities to his big-top extravaganzas.

Barnum introduced audiences to General Tom Thumb, Jumbo the elephant, and Jenny Lind, "The Swedish nightingale," among other sensations. He concluded his career by serving two terms in the legislature of his home state, Connecticut, and as the mayor of Bridgeport.

Wallace D. Wattles (1860-1911) was the author of numerous books, the best known of which is The Science of Getting Rich.

He experienced failure after failure in his early life until after many years of study and experimentation he formulated a set of principles that, with scientific precision, create financial and spiritual wealth.

He died a prosperous man in 1911.

William Walker Atkinson (1862—1932) was a noted occultist and pioneer of the New Thought Movement. He wrote extensively throughout his lifetime, often using various pseudonyms. He is widely credited with writing The Kybalion and was the founder of the Yogi Publication Society.

James Allen was born in Leicester, England, in 1864. He took his first job at age 15 to support his family, after his father was murdered while looking for work in America. Allen was employed as a factory knitter and a private secretary until the early 1900s, when he became increasingly known for his motivational writing.

His 1903 work As a Man Thinketh earned him worldwide fame as a prophet of inspirational thinking and influenced a who's-who of self-help writers, including Napoleon Hill.

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, as the Pastor of The Baptist Temple, and for his inspirational lecture, "Acres of Diamonds". He was born in South Worthington, Massachusetts.

Poet, philosopher and artist, Kahlil Gibran was born in 1883 near Mount Lebanon, a region that has produced many prophets. His poetry has been translated into more than twenty languages. His drawings and paintings have been exhibited in the great capitals of the world and compared by Auguste Rodin to the work of William Blake. Kahlil Gibran died in 1931.

Poet, philosopher and artist, Kahlil Gibran was born near Mount Lebanon. The millions of Arabic-speaking peoples familiar with his writings in that language consider him the genius of his age, but his fame and influence spread far beyond the Near East. His poetry has been translated into more than twenty languages and his drawings and paintings have been exhibited all over the world.

His many works include The Prophet, his masterpiece of religious inspiration; The Garden of the Prophet; The Storm: Stories and Prose Poems; The Beloved: Reflections on the Path of the Heart; Jesus: The Son of Man; The Voice of Kahlil Gibran, an anthology of his writings; The Vision: Reflections on the Way of the Soul; and Spirit Brides. He was for many years the leader of a Lebanese literary circle in New York, where he died in 1931.

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus was born in AD 121, in the reign of the emperor Hadrian. At first he was called Marcus Annius Verus, but his well-born father died young and he was adopted, first by his grandfather, who had him educated by a number of excellent tutors, and then, when he was sixteen, by Aurelius Antoninus, his uncle by marriage, who had been adopted as Hadrian's heir, and had no surviving sons of his own. Aurelius Antoninus changed Marcus' name to his own and betrothed him to his daughter, Faustina. She bore fourteen children, but none of the sons survived Marcus except the worthless Commodus, who eventually succeeded Marcus as emperor.

On the death of Antoninus in 161, Marcus made Lucius Verus, another adopted son of his uncle, his colleague in government. There were thus two emperors ruling jointly for the first time in Roman history. The Empire then entered a period troubled by natural disasters, famine, plague and floods, and by invasions of barbarians. In 168, one year before the death of Verus left him in sole command, Marcus went to join his legions on the Danube.

Apart from a brief visit to Asia to crush the revolt of Avidius Cassius, whose followers he treated with clemency, Marcus stayed in the Danube region and consoled his somewhat melancholy life there by writing a series of reflections which he called simply To Himself. These are now known as his Meditations, and they reveal a mind of great humanity and natural humility, formed in the Stoic tradition, which has long been admired in the Christian world. He died, of an infectious disease, perhaps, in camp on 17 March AD 180.

Not much is known about the legendary LAO TZU, to whom authorship of the TAO TEH CHING is popularly attributed. Some scholars believe the author was an elder contemporary of Confucius.