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Life will always be to a large extent what we ourselves make it.

Samuel Smiles

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.
SAMUEL SMILES

Difficult Greatness Man Reach Struggle Suffering Trial Work
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
He who never made a mistake, never made a discovery.
SAMUEL SMILES

Discover Himself Mistake
Fortune has often been blamed for her blindness; but fortune is not so blind as men are. Those who look into practical life will find that fortune is usually on the side of the industrious, as the winds and waves are on the side of the best navigators.
SAMUEL SMILES

Blame Blind Fortune Industry Practice
Men cannot be raised in masses as the mountains were in he early geological states of the world. They must be dealt with as units; for it is only by the elevation of individuals that the elevation of the masses can be effectively secured.
SAMUEL SMILES

Himself Man Mountain Raise Secure World
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
Opportunities fall in the way of every man who is resolved to take advantage of them.
SAMUEL SMILES

Advantage Fall Man Opportunity Way
Men often discover their affinity to each other by the mutual love they have for a book.
SAMUEL SMILES

Book Discover Each Other Love Man
Good sense, disciplined by experience and inspired by goodness, issues in practical wisdom.
SAMUEL SMILES

Discipline Experience Goodness Sense Wisdom
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
This extraordinary metal, the soul of every manufacture, and the mainspring perhaps of civilised society. Of iron.
SAMUEL SMILES

Civilization Manufacture Metal Soul
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
The experience gathered from books, though often valuable, is but the nature of learning; whereas the experience gained from actual life is one of the nature of wisdom.
SAMUEL SMILES

Book Experience Learning Nature Value Wisdom
It is observed at sea that men are never so much disposed to grumble and mutiny as when least employed. Hence an old captain, when there was nothing else to do, would issue the order to “scour the anchor.
SAMUEL SMILES

Employment Issue Man Observation
Time is of no account with great thoughts, which are as fresh to -day as when they first passed through their authors’ minds ages ago.
SAMUEL SMILES

Age Author Greatness Mindset Time
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.
SAMUEL SMILES

Character Firm Person Possession Stand World

Life will always be to a large extent what we ourselves make it.

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Life will always be to a large extent what we ourselves make it.

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