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Good sense, disciplined by experience and inspired by goodness, issues in practical wisdom.

Samuel Smiles

Riches are oftener an impediment than a stimulus to action; and in many cases they are quite as much a misfortune as a blessing.
SAMUEL SMILES

Action Blessing Fortune Quite
The duty of helping one’s self in the highest sense involves the helping of one’s neighbors.
SAMUEL SMILES

Help Oneself
The noble people will be nobly ruled, and the ignorant and corrupt ignobly.
SAMUEL SMILES

Corruption People Rule
Great men are always exceptional men; and greatness itself is but comparative. Indeed, the range of most men in life is so limited that very few have the opportunity of being great.
SAMUEL SMILES

Compare Greatness Life Limitation Man Opportunity
Necessity, oftener than facility, has been the mother of invention; and the most prolific school of all has been the school of difficulty.
SAMUEL SMILES

Difficult Invention Mom Necessary School
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
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.
SAMUEL SMILES

Discover Failure Finding Learning Mistake Wisdom
Hope is like the sun, which, as we journey toward it, casts the shadow of our burden behind us.
SAMUEL SMILES

Burden Hope Journey Ourselves Shadow Sun
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
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
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
Luck whines; labor whistles.
SAMUEL SMILES

Labor Luck Whistle
The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual.
SAMUEL SMILES

Growth Help Individual Spirit
A fig-tree looking on a fig-tree becometh fruitful,” says the Arabian proverb. And so it is with children; their first great instructor is example.
SAMUEL SMILES

Children Greatness Instruction
Self-control is only courage under another form.
SAMUEL SMILES

Control Courage Form
The principal industrial excellence of the English people lay in their capacity of present exertion for a distant object.
SAMUEL SMILES

Distance Excellence Industrial Object Principle

Good sense, disciplined by experience and inspired by goodness, issues in practical wisdom.

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Good sense, disciplined by experience and inspired by goodness, issues in practical wisdom.

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