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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.

Samuel Smiles

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.
SAMUEL SMILES

Affect Better Economy Greatness Industry Law Right
The brave man is an inspiration to the weak, and compels them, as it were, to follow him.
SAMUEL SMILES

Brave Follow Himself Man Weakness
The women of the poorer classes make sacrifices, and run risks, and bear privations, and exercise patience and kindness to a degree that the world never knows of, and would scarcely believe even if it did know.
SAMUEL SMILES

Believe Patience Poor Sacrifice Woman World
It is not ease, but effort-not facility, but difficulty, makes men. There is, perhaps, no station in life in which difficulties have not to be encountered and overcome before any decided measure of success can be achieved.
SAMUEL SMILES

Achievement Decision Difficult Effort Station
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 apprenticeship of difficulty is one which the greatest of men have had to serve.
SAMUEL SMILES

Difficult Greatness Man Service
Men whose acts are at variance with their words command no respect, and what they say has but little weight.
SAMUEL SMILES

Act Man Respect Weight Word
Luck whines; labor whistles.
SAMUEL SMILES

Labor Luck Whistle
Good character is property. It is the noblest of all possessions.
SAMUEL SMILES

Character Goodness Noble Possession Property
With will one can do anything.
SAMUEL SMILES

Oneself Willing
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.
SAMUEL SMILES

Father Knowledge Learning Life Value
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.
SAMUEL SMILES

Culture Education Man Teacher
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.
SAMUEL SMILES

Best Better Himself Leaving Man Teaching
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.
SAMUEL SMILES

Bright Darkness Happiness Side
Progress however, of the best kind, is comparatively slow. Great results cannot be achieved at once; and we must be satisfied to advance in life as we walk, step by step.
SAMUEL SMILES

Achievement Best Kind Progress Satisfaction Slow Walk
This extraordinary metal, the soul of every manufacture, and the mainspring perhaps of civilised society. Of iron.
SAMUEL SMILES

Civilization Manufacture Metal Soul

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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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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