black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

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 Smiles

The battle of life is, in most cases, fought uphill; and to win it without a struggle were perhaps to win it without honor. If there were no difficulties there would be no success; if there were nothing to struggle for, there would be nothing to be achieved.
SAMUEL SMILES

Achievement Battle Difficult Honor Life Respect Struggle Success
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.
SAMUEL SMILES

Believe Patience Poor Sacrifice Woman World
The great and good do no die even in this world. Embalmed in books, their spirits walk abroad. The book is a living voice. It is an intellect to which one still listens.
SAMUEL SMILES

Book Goodness Greatness Intellectual Live Oneself Voice
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
Men often discover their affinity to each other by the mutual love they have for a book.
SAMUEL SMILES

Book Discover Each Other Love Man
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
With will one can do anything.
SAMUEL SMILES

Oneself Willing
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.
SAMUEL SMILES

Discover Failure Finding Learning Mistake Wisdom
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
The very greatest things – great thoughts, discoveries, inventions – have usually been nurtured in hardship, often pondered over in sorrow, and at length established with difficulty.
SAMUEL SMILES

Difficult Discover Establishment Greatness Sorrow Thinking
Even happiness itself may become habitual. There is a habit of looking at the bright side of things, and also of looking at the dark side.
SAMUEL SMILES

Bright Darkness Happiness Side
Enthusiasm, the sustaining power of all great action.
SAMUEL SMILES

Action Enthusiasm Greatness Power
Progress however, of the best kind, is comparatively slow. Great results cannot be achieved at once; and we must be satisfied to advance in life as we walk, step by step.
SAMUEL SMILES

Achievement Best Kind Progress Satisfaction Slow Walk
Commit a child to the care of a worthless, ignorant woman, and no culture in after-life will remedy the evil you have done.
SAMUEL SMILES

Children Commitment Evil Ignorance Woman Yourself
National progress is the sum of individual industry, energy, and uprightness, as national decay is of individual idleness, selfishness, and vice.
SAMUEL SMILES

Industry National Progress Selfish
This extraordinary metal, the soul of every manufacture, and the mainspring perhaps of civilised society. Of iron.
SAMUEL SMILES

Civilization Manufacture Metal Soul

Riches are oftener an impediment than a stimulus to action; and in many cases they are quite as much a misfortune as a blessing.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

Riches are oftener an impediment than a stimulus to action; and in many cases they are quite as much a misfortune as a blessing.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Samuel Smiles Quotes