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 SMILESOne 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.
More Samuel Smiles Quotes
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Character is itself a fortune.
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Luck whines; labor whistles.
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Wisdom and understanding can only become the possession of individual men by travelling the old road of observation, attention, perseverance, and industry.
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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.
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Fortune has often been blamed for her blindness; but fortune is not so blind as men are. Those who look into practical life will find that fortune is usually on the side of the industrious, as the winds and waves are on the side of the best navigators.
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The great leader attracts to himself men of kindred character, drawing them towards him as the loadstone draws iron.
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All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. But all play and no work makes him something worse.
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The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual.
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The principal industrial excellence of the English people lay in their capacity of present exertion for a distant object.
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Labor is still, and ever will be, the inevitable price set upon everything which is valuable.
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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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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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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 apprenticeship of difficulty is one which the greatest of men have had to serve.
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Necessity, oftener than facility, has been the mother of invention; and the most prolific school of all has been the school of difficulty.
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