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The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual.

Samuel Smiles

Fortune has often been blamed for her blindness; but fortune is not so blind as men are. Those who look into practical life will find that fortune is usually on the side of the industrious, as the winds and waves are on the side of the best navigators.
SAMUEL SMILES

Blame Blind Fortune Industry Practice
Conscience is that peculiar faculty of the soul which may be called the religious instinct.
SAMUEL SMILES

Conscience Religious Soul Weird
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.
SAMUEL SMILES

Detail Energy Force Life Man Station
The Romans rightly employed the same word (virtus) to designate courage, which is, in a physical sense, what the other is in a moral; the highest virtue of all being victory over ourselves.
SAMUEL SMILES

Courage Ourselves Roman Virtue Word
Mere political reform will not cure the manifold evils which now afflict society. There requires a social reform, a domestic reform, an individual reform.
SAMUEL SMILES

Cure Domestic Evil Politics Reform
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.
SAMUEL SMILES

Discipline Instruction Life Nature Practice Reality Theory Wisdom
Make good thy standing place, and move the world.
SAMUEL SMILES

Goodness Move Place Stand World
Life will always be to a large extent what we ourselves make it.
SAMUEL SMILES

Inspirational Life Ourselves
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.
SAMUEL SMILES

Action Goodness Greatness World
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
Politeness goes far, yet costs nothing.
SAMUEL SMILES

Cost Polite
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
Life is of little value unless it be consecrated by duty.
SAMUEL SMILES

Life Responsibility Value
The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual.
SAMUEL SMILES

Growth Help Individual Spirit
Character is undergoing constant change, for better or for worse–either being elevated on the one hand, or degraded on the other.
SAMUEL SMILES

Better Character Charge Hands Worst
The great high-road of human welfare lies along the old highway of steadfast welldoing; and they who are the most persistent, and work in the truest spirit, will invariably be the most successful.
SAMUEL SMILES

Greatness Human Persistence Road Spirit Success True

The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual.

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The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual.

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