Necessity, oftener than facility, has been the mother of invention; and the most prolific school of all has been the school of difficulty.
SAMUEL SMILESIt will generally be found that men who are constantly lamenting their ill luck are only reaping the consequences of their own neglect, mismanagement, and improvidence, or want of application.
More Samuel Smiles Quotes
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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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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.
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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.
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Labour may be a burden and a chastisement, but it is also an honour and a glory. Without it, nothing can be accomplished.
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The great lesson of biography is to show what man can be and do at his best. A noble life put fairly on record acts like an inspiration to others.
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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.
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Commit a child to the care of a worthless, ignorant woman, and no culture in after-life will remedy the evil you have done.
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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.
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Hope is like the sun, which, as we journey toward it, casts the shadow of our burden behind us.
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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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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.
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Those who aren’t making mistakes probably aren’t making anything.
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Self-control is only courage under another form. It may also be regarded as the primary essence of character.
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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.
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Luck whines; labor whistles.
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