Good character is property. It is the noblest of all possessions.
SAMUEL SMILESThe most influential of all the virtues are those which are the most in request for daily use. They wear the best, and last the longest.
More Samuel Smiles Quotes
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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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Mere political reform will not cure the manifold evils which now afflict society. There requires a social reform, a domestic reform, an individual reform.
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The great leader attracts to himself men of kindred character, drawing them towards him as the loadstone draws iron.
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The brave man is an inspiration to the weak, and compels them, as it were, to follow him.
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The shortest way to do many things is to do only one thing at once.
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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.
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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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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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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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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 duty of helping one’s self in the highest sense involves the helping of one’s neighbors.
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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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Although genius always commands admiration, character most secures respect. The former is more the product of the brain, the latter of heart-power; and in the long run it is the heart that rules in life.
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The apprenticeship of difficulty is one which the greatest of men have had to serve.
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