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The great high-road of human welfare lies along the old highway of steadfast, well-doing; and they who are the most persistent, and work in the truest spirit, will invariably be the most successful; success treads on the heels of every right effort.

Samuel Smiles

Experience serves to prove that the worth and strength of a state depend far less upon the form of its institutions than upon the character of its men; for the nation is only the aggregate of individual conditions, and civilization itself is but a question of personal, improvement.
SAMUEL SMILES

Condition Experience Form Improvement Institution Personal Question Service
If we opened our minds to enjoyment, we might find tranquil pleasures spread about us on every side. We might live with the angels that visit us on every sunbeam, and sit with the fairies who wait on every flower.
SAMUEL SMILES

Angel Flower Mindset Open Pleasure
No laws, however stringent, can make the idle industrious, the thriftless provident, or the drunken sober.
SAMUEL SMILES

Drink Industry Law Sober
The principal industrial excellence of the English people lay in their capacity of present exertion for a distant object.
SAMUEL SMILES

Distance Excellence Industrial Object Principle
Life is of little value unless it be consecrated by duty.
SAMUEL SMILES

Life Responsibility Value
The reason why so little is done, is generally because so little is attempted.
SAMUEL SMILES

Attempt Reason
Man cannot aspire if he looked down; if he rise, he must look up.
SAMUEL SMILES

Aspiration Himself Man Rise
The apprenticeship of difficulty is one which the greatest of men have had to serve.
SAMUEL SMILES

Difficult Greatness Man Service
One might almost fear,” writes a thoughtful woman, “seeing how the women of to-day are lightly stirred up to run after some new fashion or faith, that heaven is not so near to them as it was to their mothers and grandmothers.
SAMUEL SMILES

Faith Fashion Grandmother Mother
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

Action Character Element Energy Force Greatness Miracle Production
The shortest way to do many things is to do only one thing at once.
SAMUEL SMILES

Focus Short Way
The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual.
SAMUEL SMILES

Growth Help Individual Spirit
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
The duty of helping one’s self in the highest sense involves the helping of one’s neighbors.
SAMUEL SMILES

Help Oneself
Men must necessarily be the active agents of their own well-being and well-doing they themselves must in the very nature of things be their own best helpers.
SAMUEL SMILES

Active Best Help Man Nature Necessary
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.
SAMUEL SMILES

Father Knowledge Learning Life Value

The great high-road of human welfare lies along the old highway of steadfast, well-doing; and they who are the most persistent, and work in the truest spirit, will invariably be the most successful; success treads on the heels of every right effort.

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The great high-road of human welfare lies along the old highway of steadfast, well-doing; and they who are the most persistent, and work in the truest spirit, will invariably be the most successful; success treads on the heels of every right effort.

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Popular Authors

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