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Example teaches better than precept. It is the best modeler of the character of men and women. To set a lofty example is the richest bequest a man can leave behind him.

Samuel Smiles

Work is one of the best educators of practical character.
SAMUEL SMILES

Best Education Practice Work
The cheapest of all things is kindness, its exercise requiring the least possible trouble and self-sacrifice. Win hearts, said Burleigh to Queen Elizabeth, and you have all men’s hearts and purses.
SAMUEL SMILES

Cheap Heart Kindness Possible Purse Sacrifice
For want of self-restraint many men are engaged all their lives in fighting with difficulties of their own making.
SAMUEL SMILES

Difficult Engagement Fight Men Ourselves
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
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
Politeness goes far, yet costs nothing.
SAMUEL SMILES

Cost Polite
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.
SAMUEL SMILES

Discipline Family Home Life Training Women
Good character is property. It is the noblest of all possessions.
SAMUEL SMILES

Character Goodness Noble Possession Property
Alexander the Great valued learning so highly, that he used to say he was more indebted to Aristotle for giving him knowledge than to his father Philip for life.
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Father Knowledge Learning Life Value
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
Self-control is only courage under another form. It may also be regarded as the primary essence of character.
SAMUEL SMILES

Character Control Courage Essence Form Primary
Men whose acts are at variance with their words command no respect, and what they say has but little weight.
SAMUEL SMILES

Act Man Respect Weight Word
It is a mistake to suppose that men succeed through success; they much oftener succeed through failures. Precept, study, advice, and example could never have taught them so well as failure has done.
SAMUEL SMILES

Advice Failure Man Mistake Success Teaching
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.
SAMUEL SMILES

Action Goodness Greatness World
Help from without is often enfeebling in its effects, but help from within invariably invigorates.
SAMUEL SMILES

External Help
Those who have most to do, and are willing to work, will find the most time.
SAMUEL SMILES

Time Willing Work

Example teaches better than precept. It is the best modeler of the character of men and women. To set a lofty example is the richest bequest a man can leave behind him.

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Example teaches better than precept. It is the best modeler of the character of men and women. To set a lofty example is the richest bequest a man can leave behind him.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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