Great men are always exceptional men; and greatness itself is but comparative. Indeed, the range of most men in life is so limited that very few have the opportunity of being great.
SAMUEL SMILESThe 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.
More Samuel Smiles Quotes
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There are many counterfeits of character, but the genuine article is difficult to be mistaken.
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Opportunities fall in the way of every man who is resolved to take advantage of them.
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He who labours not, cannot enjoy the reward of labour.
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Good character is property. It is the noblest of all possessions.
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Great men stamp their mind upon their age and nation.
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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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The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual.
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Men must necessarily be the active agents of their own well-being and well-doing they themselves must in the very nature of things be their own best helpers.
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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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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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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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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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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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Enthusiasm, the sustaining power of all great action.
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It 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.
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