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Make good thy standing place, and move the world.

Samuel Smiles

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
Help from without is often enfeebling in its effects, but help from within invariably invigorates.
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External Help
No laws, however stringent, can make the idle industrious, the thriftless provident, or the drunken sober.
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Drink Industry Law Sober
Persons with comparatively moderate powers will accomplish much, if they apply themselves wholly and indefatigably to one thing at a time.
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Accomplishment Oneself Person Power Time
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.
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Bright Darkness Happiness Side
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
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
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
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
Any number of depraved units cannot form a great nation.
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Greatness Nation
The duty of helping one’s self in the highest sense involves the helping of one’s neighbors.
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Help Oneself
Riches are oftener an impediment than a stimulus to action; and in many cases they are quite as much a misfortune as a blessing.
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Action Blessing Fortune Quite
Conscience is that peculiar faculty of the soul which may be called the religious instinct.
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Conscience Religious Soul Weird
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.
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Butterfly Color Learning Service Study
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
Men often discover their affinity to each other by the mutual love they have for a book.
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Book Discover Each Other Love Man
The government of a nation itself is usually found to be but the reflux of the individuals composing it. The government that is ahead of the people will be inevitably dragged down to their level, as the government that is behind them will in the long run be dragged up.
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Government Level Nation People
If we opened our minds to enjoyment, we might find tranquil pleasures spread about us on every side. We might live with the angels that visit us on every sunbeam, and sit with the fairies who wait on every flower.
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Angel Flower Mindset Open Pleasure
The experience gathered from books, though often valuable, is but the nature of learning; whereas the experience gained from actual life is one of the nature of wisdom.
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Book Experience Learning Nature Value Wisdom
The highest culture is not obtained from the teacher when at school or college, so much as by our ever diligent self-education when we become men.
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Culture Education Man Teacher
For want of self-restraint many men are engaged all their lives in fighting with difficulties of their own making.
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Difficult Engagement Fight Men Ourselves
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
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
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
Men whose acts are at variance with their words command no respect, and what they say has but little weight.
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Act Man Respect Weight Word
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
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.
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Application Finding Karma Luck Man Neglect

Make good thy standing place, and move the world.

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Make good thy standing place, and move the world.

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