All life is a struggle…. Under competition the lazy man is put under the necessity of exerting himself; and if he will not exert himself, he must fall behind. If he do not work, neither shall he eat.
SAMUEL SMILESCecil’s dispatch of business was extraordinary, his maxim being, “The shortest way to do many things is to do only one thing at once.”
More Samuel Smiles Quotes
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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.
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Labor is still, and ever will be, the inevitable price set upon everything which is valuable.
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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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Lost wealth may be replaced by industry, lost knowledge by study, lost health by temperance or medicine, but lost time is gone forever.
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The most influential of all the virtues are those which are the most in request for daily use. They wear the best, and last the longest.
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The brave man is an inspiration to the weak, and compels them, as it were, to follow him.
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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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Mere political reform will not cure the manifold evils which now afflict society. There requires a social reform, a domestic reform, an individual reform.
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Men who are resolved to find a way for themselves will always find opportunities enough; and if they do not find them, they will make them.
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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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Riches are oftener an impediment than a stimulus to action; and in many cases they are quite as much a misfortune as a blessing.
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Energy enables a man to force his way through irksome drudgery and dry details and caries him onward and upward to every station in life.
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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.
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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.
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