Energy enables a man to force his way through irksome drudgery and dry details and caries him onward and upward to every station in life.
SAMUEL SMILESSelf-respect is the noblest garment with which a man can clothe himself, the most elevating feeling with which the mind can be inspired.
More Samuel Smiles Quotes
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The cheapest of all things is kindness, its exercise requiring the least possible trouble and self-sacrifice. Win hearts, said Burleigh to Queen Elizabeth, and you have all men’s hearts and purses.
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The tiniest bits of opinion sown in the minds of children in private life afterwards issue forth to the world, and become its public opinion; for nations are gathered out of nurseries.
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The greatest slave is not he who is ruled by a despot, great though that evil be, but he who is in the thrall of his own moral ignorance, selfishness, and vice.
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National progress is the sum of individual industry, energy, and uprightness, as national decay is of individual idleness, selfishness, and vice.
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There are many persons of whom it may be said that they have no other possession in the world but their character, and yet they stand as firmly upon it as any crowned king.
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The duty of helping one’s self in the highest sense involves the helping of one’s neighbors.
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Alexander the Great valued learning so highly, that he used to say he was more indebted to Aristotle for giving him knowledge than to his father Philip for life.
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The Romans rightly employed the same word (virtus) to designate courage, which is, in a physical sense, what the other is in a moral; the highest virtue of all being victory over ourselves.
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We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success. We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery.
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Luck lies in bed, and wishes the postman would bring him news of a legacy; labor turns out at six, and with busy pen or ringing hammer lays the foundation of a competence.
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He who never made a mistake, never made a discovery.
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Hope is like the sun, which, as we journey toward it, casts the shadow of our burden behind us.
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Purposes, like eggs, unless they be hatched into action, will run into rottenness.
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Lost wealth may be replaced by industry, lost knowledge by study, lost health by temperance or medicine, but lost time is gone forever.
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Help from without is often enfeebling in its effects, but help from within invariably invigorates.
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