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The healthy spirit of self-help created among working people would, more than any other measure, serve to raise them as a class; and this, not by pulling down others, but by levelling them up to a higher and still advancing standard of religion, intelligence, and virtue.

Samuel Smiles

The very greatest things – great thoughts, discoveries, inventions – have usually been nurtured in hardship, often pondered over in sorrow, and at length established with difficulty.
SAMUEL SMILES

Difficult Discover Establishment Greatness Sorrow Thinking
The duty of helping one’s self in the highest sense involves the helping of one’s neighbors.
SAMUEL SMILES

Help Oneself
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.
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Condition Experience Form Improvement Institution Personal Question Service
The principal industrial excellence of the English people lay in their capacity of present exertion for a distant object.
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Distance Excellence Industrial Object Principle
The Romans rightly employed the same word (virtus) to designate courage, which is, in a physical sense, what the other is in a moral; the highest virtue of all being victory over ourselves.
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Courage Ourselves Roman Virtue Word
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.”
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Business Focus Oneself
The battle of life is, in most cases, fought uphill; and to win it without a struggle were perhaps to win it without honor. If there were no difficulties there would be no success; if there were nothing to struggle for, there would be nothing to be achieved.
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Achievement Battle Difficult Honor Life Respect Struggle Success
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
Conscience is that peculiar faculty of the soul which may be called the religious instinct.
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Conscience Religious Soul Weird
Men who are resolved to find a way for themselves will always find opportunities enough; and if they do not find them, they will make them.
SAMUEL SMILES

Creation Enough Finding Man Opportunity Way
The healthy spirit of self-help created among working people would, more than any other measure, serve to raise them as a class; and this, not by pulling down others, but by levelling them up to a higher and still advancing standard of religion, intelligence, and virtue.
SAMUEL SMILES

Creation Health Intelligence People Religion Spirit Virtue Work
To set a lofty example is the richest bequest a man can leave behind.
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Example Leaving Legacy Man
Necessity, oftener than facility, has been the mother of invention; and the most prolific school of all has been the school of difficulty.
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Difficult Invention Mom Necessary School
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. But all play and no work makes him something worse.
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Play Work Worst
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
Life will always be to a large extent what we ourselves make it.
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Inspirational Life Ourselves
Self-control is only courage under another form.
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Control Courage Form
The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual.
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Growth Help Individual Spirit
The 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.
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Best Influential Long Virtue
It is energy – the central element of which is will – that produces the miracle that is enthusiasm in all ages. Everywhere it is what is called force of character and the sustaining power of all great action.
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Action Character Element Energy Force Greatness Miracle Production
He who never made a mistake, never made a discovery.
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Discover Himself Mistake
All life is a struggle…. Under competition the lazy man is put under the necessity of exerting himself; and if he will not exert himself, he must fall behind. If he do not work, neither shall he eat.
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Competition Eat Himself Life Necessary Struggle Work
The possession of a library, or the free use of it, no more constitutes learning, than the possession of wealth constitutes generosity.
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Generous Library Possession Wealth
Good character is property. It is the noblest of all possessions.
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Character Goodness Noble Possession Property
For want of self-restraint many men are engaged all their lives in fighting with difficulties of their own making.
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Difficult Engagement Fight Men Ourselves
Woman, above all other educators, educates humanly. Man is the brain, but woman is the heart, of humanity.
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Education Human Humanity Woman
With will one can do anything.
SAMUEL SMILES

Oneself Willing

The healthy spirit of self-help created among working people would, more than any other measure, serve to raise them as a class; and this, not by pulling down others, but by levelling them up to a higher and still advancing standard of religion, intelligence, and virtue.

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The healthy spirit of self-help created among working people would, more than any other measure, serve to raise them as a class; and this, not by pulling down others, but by levelling them up to a higher and still advancing standard of religion, intelligence, and virtue.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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