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Hope is like the sun, which, as we journey toward it, casts the shadow of our burden behind us.

Samuel Smiles

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Samuel Smiles
Age: 91 †
Born: 1812
Born: December 23
Died: 1904
Died: April 16
Author
Biographer
Journalist
Philosopher
Writer
Haddington
East Lothian
Behinds
Journey
Casts
Behind
Burden
Hope
Angel
Inspirational
Motivation
Like
Shadow
Sun
Toward

More quotes by Samuel Smiles

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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.
Samuel Smiles
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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.
Samuel Smiles
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Life is of little value unless it be consecrated by duty.
Samuel Smiles
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It is possible that the scrupulously honest man may not grow rich so fast as the unscrupulous and dishonest one but the success will be of a truer kind, earned without fraud or injustice. And even though a man should for a time be unsuccessful, still he must be honest: better lose all and save character. For character is itself a fortune. . . .
Samuel Smiles
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For want of self-restraint many men are engaged all their lives in fighting with difficulties of their own making, and rendering success impossible by their own cross-grained ungentleness whilst others, it may be much less gifted, make their way and achieve success by simple patience, equanimity, and self-control.
Samuel Smiles
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The duty of helping one's self in the highest sense involves the helping of one's neighbors.
Samuel Smiles
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Diligence, above all, is the mother of good luck.
Samuel Smiles
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Genius, without work, is certainly a dumb oracle, and it is unquestionably true that the men of the highest genius have invariably been found to be amongst the most plodding, hard-working, and intent men -- their chief characteristic apparently consisting simply in their power of laboring more intensely and effectively than others.
Samuel Smiles
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Enthusiasm..the sustaining power of all great action
Samuel Smiles
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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
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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.
Samuel Smiles
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Labor is still, and ever will be, the inevitable price set upon everything which is valuable.
Samuel Smiles
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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
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Obedience, submission, discipline, courage--these are among the characteristics which make a man.
Samuel Smiles
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Manners are the ornament of action.
Samuel Smiles
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Character is itself a fortune.
Samuel Smiles
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The principal industrial excellence of the English people lay in their capacity of present exertion for a distant object.
Samuel Smiles
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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.
Samuel Smiles
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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.
Samuel Smiles
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Help from without is often enfeebling in its effects, but help from within invariably invigorates.
Samuel Smiles