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

Samuel Smiles

The brave man is an inspiration to the weak, and compels them, as it were, to follow him.
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Brave Follow Himself Man Weakness
Luck whines; labor whistles.
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Labor Luck Whistle
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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Detail Energy Force Life Man Station
He who never made a mistake, never made a discovery.
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Discover Himself Mistake
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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Greatness Lesson Life Man Noble Record
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.
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Achievement Decision Difficult Effort Station
Man cannot aspire if he looked down; if he rise, he must look up.
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Aspiration Himself Man Rise
The shortest way to do many things is to do only one thing at once.
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Focus Short Way
Enthusiasm, the sustaining power of all great action.
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Action Enthusiasm Greatness Power
The reason why so little is done, is generally because so little is attempted.
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Attempt Reason
National progress is the sum of individual industry, energy, and uprightness, as national decay is of individual idleness, selfishness, and vice.
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Industry National Progress Selfish
Character is itself a fortune.
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Character Fortune One Liner
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.
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Compare Greatness Life Limitation Man Opportunity
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
There are many persons of whom it may be said that they have no other possession in the world but their character, and yet they stand as firmly upon it as any crowned king.
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Character Firm Person Possession Stand World
The apprenticeship of difficulty is one which the greatest of men have had to serve.
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Difficult Greatness Man Service
Politeness goes far, yet costs nothing.
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Cost Polite
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.
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Condition Experience Form Improvement Institution Personal Question Service
Work is one of the best educators of practical character.
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Best Education Practice Work
The noble people will be nobly ruled, and the ignorant and corrupt ignobly.
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Corruption People Rule
The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual.
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Growth Help Individual Spirit
The great and good do no die even in this world. Embalmed in books, their spirits walk abroad. The book is a living voice. It is an intellect to which one still listens.
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Book Goodness Greatness Intellectual Live Oneself Voice
Cheerfulness is also an excellent wearing quality. It has been called the bright weather of the heart.
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Bright Cheer Excellence Heart Quality
Men whose acts are at variance with their words command no respect, and what they say has but little weight.
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Act Man Respect Weight Word
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.
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Action Goodness Greatness World
Those who have most to do, and are willing to work, will find the most time.
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Time Willing Work
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

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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