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It is energy – the central element of which is will – that produces the miracle that is enthusiasm in all ages. Everywhere it is what is called force of character and the sustaining power of all great action.

Samuel Smiles

Wisdom and understanding can only become the possession of individual men by travelling the old road of observation, attention, perseverance, and industry.
SAMUEL SMILES

Attention Industry Man Old Perseverance Possession Travel Understand Wisdom
Those who have most to do, and are willing to work, will find the most time.
SAMUEL SMILES

Time Willing Work
The healthy spirit of self-help created among working people would, more than any other measure, serve to raise them as a class; and this, not by pulling down others, but by levelling them up to a higher and still advancing standard of religion, intelligence, and virtue.
SAMUEL SMILES

Creation Health Intelligence People Religion Spirit Virtue Work
Progress, of the best kind, is comparatively slow.
SAMUEL SMILES

Best Kind Progress Slow
The apprenticeship of difficulty is one which the greatest of men have had to serve.
SAMUEL SMILES

Difficult Greatness Man Service
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.
SAMUEL SMILES

Affect Better Economy Greatness Industry Law Right
Biographies of great, but especially of good men are most instructive and useful as helps, guides, and incentives to others. Some of the best are almost equivalent to gospels,–teaching high living ,high thinking, and energetic action, for their own and, the world’s good.
SAMUEL SMILES

Action Goodness Greatness World
Life is of little value unless it be consecrated by duty.
SAMUEL SMILES

Life Responsibility Value
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.
SAMUEL SMILES

Greatness Ignorance Moral Rule Selfish Slave Vice
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.
SAMUEL SMILES

Achievement Decision Difficult Effort Station
The experience gathered from books, though often valuable, is but the nature of learning; whereas the experience gained from actual life is one of the nature of wisdom.
SAMUEL SMILES

Book Experience Learning Nature Value Wisdom
It is a mistake to suppose that men succeed through success; they much oftener succeed through failures. Precept, study, advice, and example could never have taught them so well as failure has done.
SAMUEL SMILES

Advice Failure Man Mistake Success Teaching
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. But all play and no work makes him something worse.
SAMUEL SMILES

Play Work Worst
Childhood is like a mirror, which reflects in after life the images first presented to it.
SAMUEL SMILES

Children Image Life Mirror Present
Time is of no account with great thoughts, which are as fresh to -day as when they first passed through their authors’ minds ages ago.
SAMUEL SMILES

Age Author Greatness Mindset Time
Those who aren’t making mistakes probably aren’t making anything.
SAMUEL SMILES

Failure Inspirational Mistake

It is energy – the central element of which is will – that produces the miracle that is enthusiasm in all ages. Everywhere it is what is called force of character and the sustaining power of all great action.

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Popular Authors

It is energy – the central element of which is will – that produces the miracle that is enthusiasm in all ages. Everywhere it is what is called force of character and the sustaining power of all great action.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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