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Necessity, oftener than facility, has been the mother of invention; and the most prolific school of all has been the school of difficulty.

Samuel Smiles

National progress is the sum of individual industry, energy, and uprightness, as national decay is of individual idleness, selfishness, and vice.
SAMUEL SMILES

Industry National Progress Selfish
The principal industrial excellence of the English people lay in their capacity of present exertion for a distant object.
SAMUEL SMILES

Distance Excellence Industrial Object Principle
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.
SAMUEL SMILES

Detail Energy Force Life Man Station
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 SMILES

Discipline Instruction Life Nature Practice Reality Theory Wisdom
Self-control is only courage under another form.
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Control Courage Form
Wisdom and understanding can only become the possession of individual men by travelling the old road of observation, attention, perseverance, and industry.
SAMUEL SMILES

Attention Industry Man Old Perseverance Possession Travel Understand Wisdom
The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual.
SAMUEL SMILES

Growth Help Individual Spirit
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
Fortune has often been blamed for her blindness; but fortune is not so blind as men are. Those who look into practical life will find that fortune is usually on the side of the industrious, as the winds and waves are on the side of the best navigators.
SAMUEL SMILES

Blame Blind Fortune Industry Practice
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
Woman is the heart of humanity, its grace, ornament, and solace.
SAMUEL SMILES

Grace Heart Humanity Solace Woman
Man cannot aspire if he looked down; if he rise, he must look up.
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Aspiration Himself Man Rise
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
The great and good do no die even in this world. Embalmed in books, their spirits walk abroad. The book is a living voice. It is an intellect to which one still listens.
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Book Goodness Greatness Intellectual Live Oneself Voice
Men who are resolved to find a way for themselves will always find opportunities enough; and if they do not find them, they will make them.
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Creation Enough Finding Man Opportunity Way
Obedience, submission, discipline, courage–these are among the characteristics which make a man.
SAMUEL SMILES

Courage Discipline Man Obedience Submission

Necessity, oftener than facility, has been the mother of invention; and the most prolific school of all has been the school of difficulty.

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Necessity, oftener than facility, has been the mother of invention; and the most prolific school of all has been the school of difficulty.

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Popular Authors

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