Quote

Wisdom and understanding can only become the possession of individual men by travelling the old road of observation, attention, perseverance, and industry.

Samuel Smiles

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Samuel Smiles
Age: 91 †
Born: 1812
Born: December 23
Died: 1904
Died: April 16
Author
Biographer
Journalist
Philosopher
Writer
Haddington
East Lothian
Become
Possession
Men
Road
Journey
Industry
Wisdom
Attention
Travelling
Understanding
Perseverance
Individual
Observation

More quotes by Samuel Smiles

Image
Alexander the Great valued learning so highly, that he used to say he was more indebted to Aristotle for giving him knowledge than to his father Philip for life.
Samuel Smiles
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
The principal industrial excellence of the English people lay in their capacity of present exertion for a distant object.
Samuel Smiles
Image
Commit a child to the care of a worthless, ignorant woman, and no culture in after-life will remedy the evil you have done.
Samuel Smiles
Image
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
Image
Those who have most to do, and are willing to work, will find the most time.
Samuel Smiles
Image
Woman, above all other educators, educates humanly. Man is the brain, but woman is the heart, of humanity.
Samuel Smiles
Image
Make good thy standing place, and move the world.
Samuel Smiles
Image
With will one can do anything.
Samuel Smiles
Image
Labor is still, and ever will be, the inevitable price set upon everything which is valuable.
Samuel Smiles
Image
To set a lofty example is the richest bequest a man can leave behind.
Samuel Smiles
Image
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
Image
Knowledge conquered by labor becomes a possession -a property entirely our own.
Samuel Smiles
Image
An intense anticipation itself transforms possibility into reality our desires being often but precursors of the things which we are capable of performing.
Samuel Smiles
Image
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
Image
The Romans rightly employed the same word (virtus) to designate courage, which is, in a physical sense, what the other is in a moral the highest virtue of all being victory over ourselves.
Samuel Smiles
Image
Whatever is done for men takes away from the stimulus and necessity of doing things for themselves. The value of legislative as an agent in human advancement has been much over-estimated. No laws, however stringent, can make the idle industrious, the thriftless provident or the drunken sober.
Samuel Smiles
Image
The battle of life is, in most cases, fought uphill and to win it without a struggle were perhaps to win it without honor. If there were no difficulties there would be no success if there were nothing to struggle for, there would be nothing to be achieved.
Samuel Smiles