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Riches do not constitute any claim to distinction. It is only the vulgar who admire riches as riches.

Samuel Smiles

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.
SAMUEL SMILES

Faith Fashion Grandmother Mother
No laws, however stringent, can make the idle industrious, the thriftless provident, or the drunken sober.
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Drink Industry Law Sober
Cheerfulness is also an excellent wearing quality. It has been called the bright weather of the heart.
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Bright Cheer Excellence Heart Quality
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.
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Achievement Decision Difficult Effort Station
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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Best Better Himself Leaving Man Teaching
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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Detail Energy Force Life Man Station
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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Father Knowledge Learning Life Value
Make good thy standing place, and move the world.
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Goodness Move Place Stand World
Although genius always commands admiration, character most secures respect. The former is more the product of the brain, the latter of heart-power; and in the long run it is the heart that rules in life.
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Admire Character Command Genius Heart Life Respect Secure
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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Creation Enough Finding Man Opportunity Way
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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Action Blessing Fortune Quite
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.
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Advice Failure Man Mistake Success Teaching
Character is undergoing constant change, for better or for worse–either being elevated on the one hand, or degraded on the other.
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Better Character Charge Hands Worst
The Romans rightly employed the same word (virtus) to designate courage, which is, in a physical sense, what the other is in a moral; the highest virtue of all being victory over ourselves.
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Courage Ourselves Roman Virtue Word
Enthusiasm, the sustaining power of all great action.
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Action Enthusiasm Greatness Power
The apprenticeship of difficulty is one which the greatest of men have had to serve.
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Difficult Greatness Man Service

Riches do not constitute any claim to distinction. It is only the vulgar who admire riches as riches.

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Riches do not constitute any claim to distinction. It is only the vulgar who admire riches as riches.

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Popular Authors

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