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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

Labour may be a burden and a chastisement, but it is also an honour and a glory. Without it, nothing can be accomplished.
SAMUEL SMILES

Accomplishment Burden Glory Hard Work Honor
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
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
There is no act, however trivial, but has its train of consequences.
SAMUEL SMILES

Act Consequence Training
The reason why so little is done, is generally because so little is attempted.
SAMUEL SMILES

Attempt Reason
Persons with comparatively moderate powers will accomplish much, if they apply themselves wholly and indefatigably to one thing at a time.
SAMUEL SMILES

Accomplishment Oneself Person Power Time
Enthusiasm, the sustaining power of all great action.
SAMUEL SMILES

Action Enthusiasm Greatness Power
Those who aren’t making mistakes probably aren’t making anything.
SAMUEL SMILES

Failure Inspirational Mistake
Stothard learned the art of combining colors by closely studying butterflies wings; he would often say that no one knew what he owed to these tiny insects. A burnt stick and a barn door served Wilkie in lieu of pencil and canvas.
SAMUEL SMILES

Butterfly Color Learning Service Study
Cecil’s dispatch of business was extraordinary, his maxim being, “The shortest way to do many things is to do only one thing at once.”
SAMUEL SMILES

Business Focus Oneself
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
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
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.
SAMUEL SMILES

Active Best Help Man Nature Necessary
The greatest slave is not he who is ruled by a despot, great though that evil be, but he who is in the thrall of his own moral ignorance, selfishness, and vice.
SAMUEL SMILES

Greatness Ignorance Moral Rule Selfish Slave Vice
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.
SAMUEL SMILES

Believe Patience Poor Sacrifice Woman World
The great high-road of human welfare lies along the old highway of steadfast, well-doing; and they who are the most persistent, and work in the truest spirit, will invariably be the most successful; success treads on the heels of every right effort.
SAMUEL SMILES

Greatness Human Persistence Success True Work

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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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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