Riches are oftener an impediment than a stimulus to action; and in many cases they are quite as much a misfortune as a blessing.
SAMUEL SMILESProgress, of the best kind, is comparatively slow.
More Samuel Smiles Quotes
-
-
We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success. We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery.
SAMUEL SMILES -
Success treads on the heels of every right effort; and though it is possible to overestimate success to the extent of almost deifying it, as is sometimes done, still in any worthy pursuit it is meritorious.
SAMUEL SMILES -
The apprenticeship of difficulty is one which the greatest of men have had to serve.
SAMUEL SMILES -
To set a lofty example is the richest bequest a man can leave behind.
SAMUEL SMILES -
He who labours not, cannot enjoy the reward of labour.
SAMUEL SMILES -
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.”
SAMUEL SMILES -
Good sense, disciplined by experience and inspired by goodness, issues in practical wisdom.
SAMUEL SMILES -
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 -
Although genius always commands admiration, character most secures respect. The former is more the product of the brain, the latter of heart-power; and in the long run it is the heart that rules in life.
SAMUEL SMILES -
Riches do not constitute any claim to distinction. It is only the vulgar who admire riches as riches.
SAMUEL SMILES -
Purposes, like eggs, unless they be hatched into action, will run into rottenness.
SAMUEL SMILES -
The shortest way to do many things is to do only one thing at once.
SAMUEL SMILES -
Necessity, oftener than facility, has been the mother of invention; and the most prolific school of all has been the school of difficulty.
SAMUEL SMILES -
The duty of helping one’s self in the highest sense involves the helping of one’s neighbors.
SAMUEL SMILES -
Even happiness itself may become habitual. There is a habit of looking at the bright side of things, and also of looking at the dark side.
SAMUEL SMILES -
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 -
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. But all play and no work makes him something worse.
SAMUEL SMILES -
If we opened our minds to enjoyment, we might find tranquil pleasures spread about us on every side. We might live with the angels that visit us on every sunbeam, and sit with the fairies who wait on every flower.
SAMUEL SMILES -
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.
SAMUEL SMILES -
With will one can do anything.
SAMUEL SMILES -
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.
SAMUEL SMILES -
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 -
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.
SAMUEL SMILES -
He who never made a mistake, never made a discovery.
SAMUEL SMILES -
No laws, however stringent, can make the idle industrious, the thriftless provident, or the drunken sober.
SAMUEL SMILES -
For want of self-restraint many men are engaged all their lives in fighting with difficulties of their own making.
SAMUEL SMILES