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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

Riches do not constitute any claim to distinction. It is only the vulgar who admire riches as riches.
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Admire Claim Rich Vulgar
Progress, of the best kind, is comparatively slow.
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Best Kind Progress Slow
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
Woman, above all other educators, educates humanly. Man is the brain, but woman is the heart, of humanity.
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Education Human Humanity Woman
He who never made a mistake, never made a discovery.
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Discover Himself Mistake
Life is of little value unless it be consecrated by duty.
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Life Responsibility Value
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
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.
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Greatness Ignorance Moral Rule Selfish Slave Vice
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. But all play and no work makes him something worse.
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Play Work Worst
Childhood is like a mirror, which reflects in after life the images first presented to it.
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Children Image Life Mirror Present
Woman is the heart of humanity, its grace, ornament, and solace.
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Grace Heart Humanity Solace Woman
Experience serves to prove that the worth and strength of a state depend far less upon the form of its institutions than upon the character of its men; for the nation is only the aggregate of individual conditions, and civilization itself is but a question of personal, improvement.
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Condition Experience Form Improvement Institution Personal Question Service
The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual.
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Growth Help Individual Spirit
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
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
The very greatest things – great thoughts, discoveries, inventions – have usually been nurtured in hardship, often pondered over in sorrow, and at length established with difficulty.
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Difficult Discover Establishment Greatness Sorrow Thinking
The possession of a library, or the free use of it, no more constitutes learning, than the possession of wealth constitutes generosity.
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Generous Library Possession Wealth
Self-respect is the noblest garment with which a man can clothe himself, the most elevating feeling with which the mind can be inspired.
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Clothes Feeling Himself Man Mindset Noble Respect
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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Creation Health Intelligence People Religion Spirit Virtue Work
Labour may be a burden and a chastisement, but it is also an honour and a glory. Without it, nothing can be accomplished.
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Accomplishment Burden Glory Hard Work Honor
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
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
Good sense, disciplined by experience and inspired by goodness, issues in practical wisdom.
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Discipline Experience Goodness Sense Wisdom
All life is a struggle…. Under competition the lazy man is put under the necessity of exerting himself; and if he will not exert himself, he must fall behind. If he do not work, neither shall he eat.
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Competition Eat Himself Life Necessary Struggle Work
When typhus or cholera breaks out, they tell us that Nobody is to blame. That terrible Nobody! How much he has to answer for. More mischief is done by Nobody than by all the world besides.
SAMUEL SMILES

Answer Blame Terrible World
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

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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