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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.

Samuel Smiles

Good sense, disciplined by experience and inspired by goodness, issues in practical wisdom.
SAMUEL SMILES

Discipline Experience Goodness Sense Wisdom
Cheerfulness is also an excellent wearing quality. It has been called the bright weather of the heart.
SAMUEL SMILES

Bright Cheer Excellence Heart Quality
Stothard learned the art of combining colors by closely studying butterflies wings; he would often say that no one knew what he owed to these tiny insects. A burnt stick and a barn door served Wilkie in lieu of pencil and canvas.
SAMUEL SMILES

Butterfly Color Learning Service Study
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
There is no act, however trivial, but has its train of consequences.
SAMUEL SMILES

Act Consequence Training
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.
SAMUEL SMILES

Discover Failure Finding Learning Mistake Wisdom
Great men stamp their mind upon their age and nation.
SAMUEL SMILES

Age Greatness Man Mindset Nation
No laws, however stringent, can make the idle industrious, the thriftless provident, or the drunken sober.
SAMUEL SMILES

Drink Industry Law Sober
It will generally be found that men who are constantly lamenting their ill luck are only reaping the consequences of their own neglect, mismanagement, and improvidence, or want of application.
SAMUEL SMILES

Application Finding Karma Luck Man Neglect
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.
SAMUEL SMILES

Achievement Decision Difficult Effort Station
Those who aren’t making mistakes probably aren’t making anything.
SAMUEL SMILES

Failure Inspirational Mistake
The greatest slave is not he who is ruled by a despot, great though that evil be, but he who is in the thrall of his own moral ignorance, selfishness, and vice.
SAMUEL SMILES

Greatness Ignorance Moral Rule Selfish Slave Vice
The battle of life is, in most cases, fought uphill; and to win it without a struggle were perhaps to win it without honor. If there were no difficulties there would be no success; if there were nothing to struggle for, there would be nothing to be achieved.
SAMUEL SMILES

Achievement Battle Difficult Honor Life Respect Struggle Success
Hope… is the companion of power, and the mother of success; for who so hopes has within him the gift of miracles.
SAMUEL SMILES

Gift Himself Hope Miracle Mom Power Success
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
He who never made a mistake, never made a discovery.
SAMUEL SMILES

Discover Himself Mistake

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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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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Popular Authors

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