Necessity, oftener than facility, has been the mother of invention; and the most prolific school of all has been the school of difficulty.
SAMUEL SMILESIt 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.
More Samuel Smiles Quotes
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Example teaches better than precept. It is the best modeler of the character of men and women. To set a lofty example is the richest bequest a man can leave behind him.
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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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Self-control is only courage under another form.
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The great lesson of biography is to show what man can be and do at his best. A noble life put fairly on record acts like an inspiration to others.
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Hope… is the companion of power, and the mother of success; for who so hopes has within him the gift of miracles.
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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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Men often discover their affinity to each other by the mutual love they have for a book.
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Character is itself a fortune.
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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.
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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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Good character is property. It is the noblest of all possessions.
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National progress is the sum of individual industry, energy, and uprightness, as national decay is of individual idleness, selfishness, and vice.
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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.
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The highest culture is not obtained from the teacher when at school or college, so much as by our ever diligent self-education when we become men.
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