Progress, of the best kind, is comparatively slow.
SAMUEL SMILESCheerfulness is also an excellent wearing quality. It has been called the bright weather of the heart.
More Samuel Smiles Quotes
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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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Men must necessarily be the active agents of their own well-being and well-doing they themselves must in the very nature of things be their own best helpers.
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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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Lost wealth may be replaced by industry, lost knowledge by study, lost health by temperance or medicine, but lost time is gone forever.
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Men whose acts are at variance with their words command no respect, and what they say has but little weight.
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Life is of little value unless it be consecrated by duty.
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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.
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Man cannot aspire if he looked down; if he rise, he must look up.
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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.
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Childhood is like a mirror, which reflects in after life the images first presented to it.
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National progress is the sum of individual industry, energy, and uprightness, as national decay is of individual idleness, selfishness, and vice.
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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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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.
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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.
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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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Riches are oftener an impediment than a stimulus to action; and in many cases they are quite as much a misfortune as a blessing.
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Opportunities fall in the way of every man who is resolved to take advantage of them.
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The great and good do no die even in this world. Embalmed in books, their spirits walk abroad. The book is a living voice. It is an intellect to which one still listens.
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He who labours not, cannot enjoy the reward of labour.
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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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It is the close observation of little things which is the secret of success in business, in art, in science, and in every pursuit of life.
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Those who have most to do, and are willing to work, will find the most time.
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The principal industrial excellence of the English people lay in their capacity of present exertion for a distant object.
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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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Persons with comparatively moderate powers will accomplish much, if they apply themselves wholly and indefatigably to one thing at a time.
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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.
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