It will generally be found that men who are constantly lamenting their ill luck are only reaping the consequences of their own neglect, mismanagement, and improvidence, or want of application.
SAMUEL SMILESExperience 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.
More Samuel Smiles Quotes
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Life will always be to a large extent what we ourselves make it.
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Childhood is like a mirror, which reflects in after life the images first presented to it.
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No laws, however stringent, can make the idle industrious, the thriftless provident, or the drunken sober. Such reforms can only be effected by means of individual action, economy and self-denial; by better habits, rather than by greater rights.
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With will one can do anything.
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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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He who never made a mistake, never made a discovery.
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Progress however, of the best kind, is comparatively slow. Great results cannot be achieved at once; and we must be satisfied to advance in life as we walk, step by step.
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Labor is still, and ever will be, the inevitable price set upon everything which is valuable.
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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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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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Obedience, submission, discipline, courage–these are among the characteristics which make a man.
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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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One might almost fear,” writes a thoughtful woman, “seeing how the women of to-day are lightly stirred up to run after some new fashion or faith, that heaven is not so near to them as it was to their mothers and grandmothers.
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Character is itself a fortune.
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The highest culture is not obtained from the teacher when at school or college, so much as by our ever diligent self-education when we become men.
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