Samuel Smiles Quotes

The great lesson of biography is to show what man can be and do at his best. A noble life put fairly on record acts like an inspiration to others.

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.

The reason why so little is done, is generally because so little is attempted.

Labour may be a burden and a chastisement, but it is also an honour and a glory. Without it, nothing can be accomplished.

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.

Length of years is no proper test of length of life. A man's life is to be measured by what he does in it and what he feels in it.

The great leader attracts to himself men of kindred character, drawing them towards him as the loadstone draws iron.

A place for everything and everything in its place

Self-respect is the noblest garment with which a man can clothe himself, the most elevating feeling with which the mind can be inspired.

Opportunities ... fall in the way of every man who is resolved to take advantage of them.

Commit a child to the care of a worthless, ignorant woman, and no culture in after-life will remedy the evil you have done.

Those who aren't making mistakes probably aren't making anything.

A fig-tree looking on a fig-tree becometh fruitful, says the Arabian proverb. And so it is with children; their first great instructor is example.

Sympathy is the golden key that unlocks the hearts of others.

The life of a good man is at the same time the most eloquent lesson of virtue and the most severe reproof of vice.

The noble people will be nobly ruled, and the ignorant and corrupt ignobly.

No laws, however stringent, can make the idle industrious, the thriftless provident, or the drunken sober.

Life will always be to a large extent what we ourselves make it.

With will one can do anything.

He who labours not, cannot enjoy the reward of labour.

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.

Knowledge conquered by labor becomes a possession - a property entirely our own.

Good character is property. It is the noblest of all possessions.

There are many counterfeits of character, but the genuine article is difficult to be mistaken.

Life is of little value unless it be consecrated by duty.

Like men, nations are purified and strengthened by trials.

Self-control is only courage under another form.

The egotist is next door to a fanatic.

Help from without is often enfeebling in its effects, but help from within invariably invigorates.

Necessity, oftener than facility, has been the mother of invention; and the most prolific school of all has been the school of difficulty.

Man cannot aspire if he looked down; if he rise, he must look up.

Riches do not constitute any claim to distinction. It is only the vulgar who admire riches as riches.

Sow a thought and you get an act; Sow an act and you get a habit; Sow a habit and you get a character; Sow a character and you get a destiny.

Energy of will may be defined to be the very central power of character in a man.

Hope ... is the companion of power, and the mother of success; for who so hopes has within him the gift of miracles.

Time is of no account with great thoughts. They are as fresh today as when they first passed through their author's minds, ages ago.

Any number of depraved units cannot form a great nation.

The shortest way to do many things is to do only one thing at once.

The principal industrial excellence of the English people lay in their capacity of present exertion for a distant object.

It is idleness that is the curse of man - not labour. Idleness eats the heart out of men as of nations, and consumes them as rust does iron.

The duty of helping one's self in the highest sense involves the helping of one's neighbors.

Work is one of the best educators of practical character.

Manners are the ornament of action.

Diligence, above all, is the mother of good luck.

Lost wealth may be replaced by industry, lost knowledge by study, lost health by temperance or medicine, but lost time is gone forever.

There is no act, however trivial, but has its train of consequences.

Those who are the most persistent, and work in the true spirit, will invariably be the most successful.

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.

Liberty is the result of free individual action,energy and independence.

National progress is the sum of individual industry, energy, and uprightness, as national decay is of individual idleness, selfishness, and vice.

Great men stamp their mind upon their age and nation.

Hope is the companion of power, and mother of success; for who so hopes strongly has within him the gift of miracles.

Conscience is that peculiar faculty of the soul which may be called the religious instinct.

Woman is the heart of humanity ... its grace, ornament, and solace.

The possession of a library, or the free use of it, no more constitutes learning, than the possession of wealth constitutes generosity.

This extraordinary metal, the soul of every manufacture, and the mainspring perhaps of civilised society. Of iron.

The apprenticeship of difficulty is one which the greatest of men have had to serve.

Riches are oftener an impediment than a stimulus to action; and in many cases they are quite as much a misfortune as a blessing.

Make good thy standing place, and move the world.

Men whose acts are at variance with their words command no respect, and what they say has but little weight.

The truest politeness comes of sincerity.

Woman, above all other educators, educates humanly. Man is the brain, but woman is the heart, of humanity.

Marriage like government is a series of compromises. One must give and take, repair and restrain, endure and be patient.

Persons with comparatively moderate powers will accomplish much, if they apply themselves wholly and indefatigably to one thing at a time.

Obedience, submission, discipline, courage
these are among the characteristics which make a man.

Purposes, like eggs, unless they be hatched into action, will run into rottenness.

Idleness of the mind is much worse than that of the body: wit, without employment, is a disease - the rust of the soul, a plague, a hell itself.

Labor is still, and ever will be, the inevitable price set upon everything which is valuable.

Character is undergoing constant change, for better or for worse
either being elevated on the one hand, or degraded on the other.

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.

To set a lofty example is the richest bequest a man can leave behind.

Character is itself a fortune.

The brave man is an inspiration to the weak, and compels them, as it were, to follow him.

Enthusiasm ... the sustaining power of all great action.

The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual.

Honorable industry always travels the same road with enjoyment and duty, and progress is altogether impossible without it.

There is far too much croaking among young men.

If character be irrecoverably lost, then indeed there will be nothing left worth saving.

Men often discover their affinity to each other by the mutual love they have for a book.

Admiration of great men, living or dead, naturally evokes imitation of them in a greater or less degree.

The wise man ... if he would live at peace with others, he will bear and forbear.

Those who have most to do, and are willing to work, will find the most time.

All that is great in man comes through work; and civilization is its product.

Politeness goes far, yet costs nothing.

Good sense, disciplined by experience and inspired by goodness, issues in practical wisdom.

Cheerfulness is also an excellent wearing quality. It has been called the bright weather of the heart.

Good actions give strength to ourselves and inspire good actions in others.

A woman's best qualities do not reside in her intellect, but in her affections. She gives refreshment by her sympathies, rather than by her knowledge.

Character is property. It is the noblest of possessions.