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Purposes, like eggs, unless they be hatched into action, will run into rottenness.

Samuel Smiles

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.
SAMUEL SMILES

Action Character Element Energy Force Greatness Miracle Production
Help from without is often enfeebling in its effects, but help from within invariably invigorates.
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External Help
The work of many of the greatest men, inspired by duty, has been done amidst suffering and trial and difficulty. They have struggled against the tide, and reached the shore exhausted.
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Difficult Greatness Man Reach Struggle Suffering Trial Work
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
Wisdom and understanding can only become the possession of individual men by travelling the old road of observation, attention, perseverance, and industry.
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Attention Industry Man Old Perseverance Possession Travel Understand Wisdom
The duty of helping one’s self in the highest sense involves the helping of one’s neighbors.
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Help Oneself
It is a mistake to suppose that men succeed through success; they much oftener succeed through failures. Precept, study, advice, and example could never have taught them so well as failure has done.
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Advice Failure Man Mistake Success Teaching
There are many counterfeits of character, but the genuine article is difficult to be mistaken.
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Article Character Difficult Mistake
The best school of discipline is home. Family life is God’s own method of training the young, and homes are very much as women make them.
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Discipline Family Home Life Training Women
Character is itself a fortune.
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Character Fortune One Liner
The principal industrial excellence of the English people lay in their capacity of present exertion for a distant object.
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Distance Excellence Industrial Object Principle
The shortest way to do many things is to do only one thing at once.
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Focus Short Way
Any number of depraved units cannot form a great nation.
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Greatness Nation
Example teaches better than precept. It is the best modeler of the character of men and women. To set a lofty example is the richest bequest a man can leave behind him.
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Best Better Himself Leaving Man Teaching
Biographies of great, but especially of good men are most instructive and useful as helps, guides, and incentives to others. Some of the best are almost equivalent to gospels,–teaching high living ,high thinking, and energetic action, for their own and, the world’s good.
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Action Goodness Greatness World
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

Purposes, like eggs, unless they be hatched into action, will run into rottenness.

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Purposes, like eggs, unless they be hatched into action, will run into rottenness.

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Popular Authors

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