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Childhood is like a mirror, which reflects in after life the images first presented to it.

Samuel Smiles

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
Opportunities fall in the way of every man who is resolved to take advantage of them.
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Advantage Fall Man Opportunity Way
The reason why so little is done, is generally because so little is attempted.
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Attempt Reason
Politeness goes far, yet costs nothing.
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Cost Polite
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. But all play and no work makes him something worse.
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Play Work Worst
The most influential of all the virtues are those which are the most in request for daily use. They wear the best, and last the longest.
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Best Influential Long Virtue
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
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
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
There is no act, however trivial, but has its train of consequences.
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Act Consequence Training
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
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
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
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
Progress, of the best kind, is comparatively slow.
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Best Kind Progress Slow
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

Childhood is like a mirror, which reflects in after life the images first presented to it.

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Childhood is like a mirror, which reflects in after life the images first presented to it.

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