Riches are oftener an impediment than a stimulus to action; and in many cases they are quite as much a misfortune as a blessing.
SAMUEL SMILESThe duty of helping one’s self in the highest sense involves the helping of one’s neighbors.
More Samuel Smiles Quotes
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Riches do not constitute any claim to distinction. It is only the vulgar who admire riches as riches.
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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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Self-control is only courage under another form. It may also be regarded as the primary essence of character.
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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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The best school of discipline is home. Family life is God’s own method of training the young, and homes are very much as women make them.
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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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Make good thy standing place, and move the world.
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Success treads on the heels of every right effort; and though it is possible to overestimate success to the extent of almost deifying it, as is sometimes done, still in any worthy pursuit it is meritorious.
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It is the close observation of little things which is the secret of success in business, in art, in science, and in every pursuit of life.
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Enthusiasm, the sustaining power of all great action.
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Stothard learned the art of combining colors by closely studying butterflies wings; he would often say that no one knew what he owed to these tiny insects. A burnt stick and a barn door served Wilkie in lieu of pencil and canvas.
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The great high-road of human welfare lies along the old highway of steadfast welldoing; and they who are the most persistent, and work in the truest spirit, will invariably be the most successful.
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The apprenticeship of difficulty is one which the greatest of men have had to serve.
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No laws, however stringent, can make the idle industrious, the thriftless provident, or the drunken sober. Such reforms can only be effected by means of individual action, economy and self-denial; by better habits, rather than by greater rights.
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Life is of little value unless it be consecrated by duty.
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It is observed at sea that men are never so much disposed to grumble and mutiny as when least employed. Hence an old captain, when there was nothing else to do, would issue the order to “scour the anchor.
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Good sense, disciplined by experience and inspired by goodness, issues in practical wisdom.
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The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual.
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Conscience is that peculiar faculty of the soul which may be called the religious instinct.
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It is not ease, but effort-not facility, but difficulty, makes men. There is, perhaps, no station in life in which difficulties have not to be encountered and overcome before any decided measure of success can be achieved.
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The shortest way to do many things is to do only one thing at once.
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Although genius always commands admiration, character most secures respect. The former is more the product of the brain, the latter of heart-power; and in the long run it is the heart that rules in life.
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The women of the poorer classes make sacrifices, and run risks, and bear privations, and exercise patience and kindness to a degree that the world never knows of, and would scarcely believe even if it did know.
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Obedience, submission, discipline, courage–these are among the characteristics which make a man.
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The government of a nation itself is usually found to be but the reflux of the individuals composing it. The government that is ahead of the people will be inevitably dragged down to their level, as the government that is behind them will in the long run be dragged up.
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Childhood is like a mirror, which reflects in after life the images first presented to it.
SAMUEL SMILES