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The duty of helping one’s self in the highest sense involves the helping of one’s neighbors.

Samuel Smiles

Men must necessarily be the active agents of their own well-being and well-doing they themselves must in the very nature of things be their own best helpers.
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Active Best Help Man Nature Necessary
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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Greatness Lesson Life Man Noble Record
Like men, nations are purified and strengthened by trials.
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Man Nation Purity Strength
The brave man is an inspiration to the weak, and compels them, as it were, to follow him.
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Brave Follow Himself Man Weakness
The great and good do no die even in this world. Embalmed in books, their spirits walk abroad. The book is a living voice. It is an intellect to which one still listens.
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Book Goodness Greatness Intellectual Live Oneself Voice
Great men stamp their mind upon their age and nation.
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Age Greatness Man Mindset Nation
Luck whines; labor whistles.
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Labor Luck Whistle
No laws, however stringent, can make the idle industrious, the thriftless provident, or the drunken sober. Such reforms can only be effected by means of individual action, economy and self-denial; by better habits, rather than by greater rights.
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Affect Better Economy Greatness Industry Law Right
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
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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Discover Failure Finding Learning Mistake Wisdom
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
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.
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Action Goodness Greatness World
He who labours not, cannot enjoy the reward of labour.
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Enjoyment Labour Reward
Those who aren’t making mistakes probably aren’t making anything.
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Failure Inspirational Mistake
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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Difficult Invention Mom Necessary School
With will one can do anything.
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Oneself Willing
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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Cure Domestic Evil Politics Reform
The duty of helping one’s self in the highest sense involves the helping of one’s neighbors.
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Help Oneself
The principal industrial excellence of the English people lay in their capacity of present exertion for a distant object.
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Distance Excellence Industrial Object Principle
The great high-road of human welfare lies along the old highway of steadfast, well-doing; and they who are the most persistent, and work in the truest spirit, will invariably be the most successful; success treads on the heels of every right effort.
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Greatness Human Persistence Success True 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
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
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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Industry National Progress Selfish
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.
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Discipline Instruction Life Nature Practice Reality Theory Wisdom
The tiniest bits of opinion sown in the minds of children in private life afterwards issue forth to the world, and become its public opinion; for nations are gathered out of nurseries.
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Issue Mindset Nation Opinion World
Progress, of the best kind, is comparatively slow.
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Best Kind Progress Slow
Life will always be to a large extent what we ourselves make it.
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Inspirational Life Ourselves

The duty of helping one’s self in the highest sense involves the helping of one’s neighbors.

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The duty of helping one’s self in the highest sense involves the helping of one’s neighbors.

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