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The shortest way to do many things is to do only one thing at once.

Samuel Smiles

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
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.
SAMUEL SMILES

Detail Energy Force Life Man Station
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 possession of a library, or the free use of it, no more constitutes learning, than the possession of wealth constitutes generosity.
SAMUEL SMILES

Generous Library Possession Wealth
Opportunities fall in the way of every man who is resolved to take advantage of them.
SAMUEL SMILES

Advantage Fall Man Opportunity Way
The noble people will be nobly ruled, and the ignorant and corrupt ignobly.
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Corruption People Rule
The great leader attracts to himself men of kindred character, drawing them towards him as the loadstone draws iron.
SAMUEL SMILES

Character Greatness Himself Leadership
Practical wisdom is only to be learned in the school of experience. Precepts and instruction are useful so far as they go, but, without the discipline of real life, they remain of the nature of theory only.
SAMUEL SMILES

Discipline Instruction Life Nature Practice Reality Theory Wisdom
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
Biographies of great, but especially of good men are most instructive and useful as helps, guides, and incentives to others. Some of the best are almost equivalent to gospels,–teaching high living ,high thinking, and energetic action, for their own and, the world’s good.
SAMUEL SMILES

Action Goodness Greatness World
Work is one of the best educators of practical character.
SAMUEL SMILES

Best Education Practice Work
Cecil’s dispatch of business was extraordinary, his maxim being, “The shortest way to do many things is to do only one thing at once.”
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Business Focus Oneself
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.
SAMUEL SMILES

Best Influential Long Virtue
Life will always be to a large extent what we ourselves make it.
SAMUEL SMILES

Inspirational Life Ourselves
The reason why so little is done, is generally because so little is attempted.
SAMUEL SMILES

Attempt Reason
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. But all play and no work makes him something worse.
SAMUEL SMILES

Play Work Worst

The shortest way to do many things is to do only one thing at once.

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The shortest way to do many things is to do only one thing at once.

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