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 SMILESIt 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.
More Samuel Smiles Quotes
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Commit a child to the care of a worthless, ignorant woman, and no culture in after-life will remedy the evil you have done.
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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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There are many persons of whom it may be said that they have no other possession in the world but their character, and yet they stand as firmly upon it as any crowned king.
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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.
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Obedience, submission, discipline, courage–these are among the characteristics which make a man.
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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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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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Enthusiasm, the sustaining power of all great action.
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Lost wealth may be replaced by industry, lost knowledge by study, lost health by temperance or medicine, but lost time is gone forever.
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The great leader attracts to himself men of kindred character, drawing them towards him as the loadstone draws iron.
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Conscience is that peculiar faculty of the soul which may be called the religious instinct.
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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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The duty of helping one’s self in the highest sense involves the helping of one’s neighbors.
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Men cannot be raised in masses as the mountains were in he early geological states of the world. They must be dealt with as units; for it is only by the elevation of individuals that the elevation of the masses can be effectively secured.
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Life is of little value unless it be consecrated by duty.
SAMUEL SMILES