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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.

Samuel Smiles

Cheerfulness is also an excellent wearing quality. It has been called the bright weather of the heart.
SAMUEL SMILES

Bright Cheer Excellence Heart Quality
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
This extraordinary metal, the soul of every manufacture, and the mainspring perhaps of civilised society. Of iron.
SAMUEL SMILES

Civilization Manufacture Metal Soul
The truest politeness comes of sincerity.
SAMUEL SMILES

One Liner Polite Sincere True
There are many counterfeits of character, but the genuine article is difficult to be mistaken.
SAMUEL SMILES

Article Character Difficult Mistake
Purposes, like eggs, unless they be hatched into action, will run into rottenness.
SAMUEL SMILES

Action Egg Purpose Run
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
There is no act, however trivial, but has its train of consequences.
SAMUEL SMILES

Act Consequence Training
Riches are oftener an impediment than a stimulus to action; and in many cases they are quite as much a misfortune as a blessing.
SAMUEL SMILES

Action Blessing Fortune Quite
Even happiness itself may become habitual. There is a habit of looking at the bright side of things, and also of looking at the dark side.
SAMUEL SMILES

Bright Darkness Happiness Side
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.
SAMUEL SMILES

Competition Eat Himself Life Necessary Struggle Work
The duty of helping one’s self in the highest sense involves the helping of one’s neighbors.
SAMUEL SMILES

Help Oneself
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.
SAMUEL SMILES

Believe Patience Poor Sacrifice Woman World
Mere political reform will not cure the manifold evils which now afflict society. There requires a social reform, a domestic reform, an individual reform.
SAMUEL SMILES

Cure Domestic Evil Politics Reform
Like men, nations are purified and strengthened by trials.
SAMUEL SMILES

Man Nation Purity Strength
Any number of depraved units cannot form a great nation.
SAMUEL SMILES

Greatness Nation

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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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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