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Men whose acts are at variance with their words command no respect, and what they say has but little weight.

Samuel Smiles

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. But all play and no work makes him something worse.
SAMUEL SMILES

Play Work Worst
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
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
Time is of no account with great thoughts, which are as fresh to -day as when they first passed through their authors’ minds ages ago.
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Age Author Greatness Mindset Time
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
National progress is the sum of individual industry, energy, and uprightness, as national decay is of individual idleness, selfishness, and vice.
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Industry National Progress Selfish
The apprenticeship of difficulty is one which the greatest of men have had to serve.
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Difficult Greatness Man Service
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
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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Children Commitment Evil Ignorance Woman Yourself
Hope is like the sun, which, as we journey toward it, casts the shadow of our burden behind us.
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Burden Hope Journey Ourselves Shadow Sun
For want of self-restraint many men are engaged all their lives in fighting with difficulties of their own making.
SAMUEL SMILES

Difficult Engagement Fight Men Ourselves
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
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
No laws, however stringent, can make the idle industrious, the thriftless provident, or the drunken sober. Such reforms can only be effected by means of individual action, economy and self-denial; by better habits, rather than by greater rights.
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Affect Better Economy Greatness Industry Law Right
Luck lies in bed, and wishes the postman would bring him news of a legacy; labor turns out at six, and with busy pen or ringing hammer lays the foundation of a competence.
SAMUEL SMILES

Bed Foundation Lying Pregnant
Help from without is often enfeebling in its effects, but help from within invariably invigorates.
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External Help
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
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.
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Answer Blame Terrible World
There are many counterfeits of character, but the genuine article is difficult to be mistaken.
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Article Character Difficult Mistake
Luck whines; labor whistles.
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Labor Luck Whistle
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
The great high-road of human welfare lies along the old highway of steadfast welldoing; and they who are the most persistent, and work in the truest spirit, will invariably be the most successful.
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Greatness Human Persistence Road Spirit Success True
The noble people will be nobly ruled, and the ignorant and corrupt ignobly.
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Corruption People Rule
Politeness goes far, yet costs nothing.
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Cost Polite
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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Forever Health Lost Medicine Replacement Temper Wealth
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 tiniest bits of opinion sown in the minds of children in private life afterwards issue forth to the world, and become its public opinion; for nations are gathered out of nurseries.
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Issue Mindset Nation Opinion World

Men whose acts are at variance with their words command no respect, and what they say has but little weight.

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Men whose acts are at variance with their words command no respect, and what they say has but little weight.

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