It is the close observation of little things which is the secret of success in business, in art, in science, and in every pursuit of life.
SAMUEL SMILESCecil’s dispatch of business was extraordinary, his maxim being, “The shortest way to do many things is to do only one thing at once.”
More Samuel Smiles Quotes
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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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No laws, however stringent, can make the idle industrious, the thriftless provident, or the drunken sober.
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Character is itself a fortune.
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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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Those who aren’t making mistakes probably aren’t making anything.
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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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The highest culture is not obtained from the teacher when at school or college, so much as by our ever diligent self-education when we become men.
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He who never made a mistake, never made a discovery.
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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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Obedience, submission, discipline, courage–these are among the characteristics which make a man.
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Stothard learned the art of combining colors by closely studying butterflies wings; he would often say that no one knew what he owed to these tiny insects. A burnt stick and a barn door served Wilkie in lieu of pencil and canvas.
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To set a lofty example is the richest bequest a man can leave behind.
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Marriage like government is a series of compromises. One must give and take, repair and restrain, endure and be patient.
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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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The 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.
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