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Like men, nations are purified and strengthened by trials.

Samuel Smiles

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
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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Accomplishment Burden Glory Hard Work Honor
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.
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Believe Patience Poor Sacrifice Woman World
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
Riches are oftener an impediment than a stimulus to action; and in many cases they are quite as much a misfortune as a blessing.
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Action Blessing Fortune Quite
Men must necessarily be the active agents of their own well-being and well-doing they themselves must in the very nature of things be their own best helpers.
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Active Best Help Man Nature Necessary
With will one can do anything.
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Oneself Willing
Obedience, submission, discipline, courage–these are among the characteristics which make a man.
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Courage Discipline Man Obedience Submission
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
We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success. We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery.
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Discover Failure Finding Learning Mistake Wisdom
Marriage like government is a series of compromises. One must give and take, repair and restrain, endure and be patient.
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Compromise Endurance Government Marriage Patience Repair
One might almost fear,” writes a thoughtful woman, “seeing how the women of to-day are lightly stirred up to run after some new fashion or faith, that heaven is not so near to them as it was to their mothers and grandmothers.
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Faith Fashion Grandmother Mother
The possession of a library, or the free use of it, no more constitutes learning, than the possession of wealth constitutes generosity.
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Generous Library Possession Wealth
To set a lofty example is the richest bequest a man can leave behind.
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Example Leaving Legacy Man
There are many counterfeits of character, but the genuine article is difficult to be mistaken.
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Article Character Difficult Mistake
Experience serves to prove that the worth and strength of a state depend far less upon the form of its institutions than upon the character of its men; for the nation is only the aggregate of individual conditions, and civilization itself is but a question of personal, improvement.
SAMUEL SMILES

Condition Experience Form Improvement Institution Personal Question Service

Like men, nations are purified and strengthened by trials.

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Like men, nations are purified and strengthened by trials.

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