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Energy enables a man to force his way through irksome drudgery and dry details and caries him onward and upward to every station in life.

Samuel Smiles

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
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.
SAMUEL SMILES

Condition Experience Form Improvement Institution Personal Question Service
Enthusiasm, the sustaining power of all great action.
SAMUEL SMILES

Action Enthusiasm Greatness Power
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
Politeness goes far, yet costs nothing.
SAMUEL SMILES

Cost Polite
The shortest way to do many things is to do only one thing at once.
SAMUEL SMILES

Focus Short Way
Luck lies in bed, and wishes the postman would bring him news of a legacy; labor turns out at six, and with busy pen or ringing hammer lays the foundation of a competence.
SAMUEL SMILES

Bed Foundation Lying Pregnant
Marriage like government is a series of compromises. One must give and take, repair and restrain, endure and be patient.
SAMUEL SMILES

Compromise Endurance Government Marriage Patience Repair
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
Those who have most to do, and are willing to work, will find the most time.
SAMUEL SMILES

Time Willing Work
The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual.
SAMUEL SMILES

Growth Help Individual Spirit
Those who aren’t making mistakes probably aren’t making anything.
SAMUEL SMILES

Failure Inspirational Mistake
The apprenticeship of difficulty is one which the greatest of men have had to serve.
SAMUEL SMILES

Difficult Greatness Man Service
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
Self-control is only courage under another form.
SAMUEL SMILES

Control Courage Form
There are many counterfeits of character, but the genuine article is difficult to be mistaken.
SAMUEL SMILES

Article Character Difficult Mistake

Energy enables a man to force his way through irksome drudgery and dry details and caries him onward and upward to every station in life.

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Energy enables a man to force his way through irksome drudgery and dry details and caries him onward and upward to every station in life.

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Popular Authors

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