Quote

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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Samuel Smiles
Age: 91 †
Born: 1812
Born: December 23
Died: 1904
Died: April 16
Author
Biographer
Journalist
Philosopher
Writer
Haddington
East Lothian
Well
Helpers
Must
Agents
Things
Necessarily
Men
Active
Responsibility
Nature
Best
Wells

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No good thing is ever lost. Nothing dies, not even life which gives up one form only to resume another. No good action, no good example dies. It lives forever in our race. While the frame moulders and disappears, the deed leaves an indelible stamp, and molds the very thought and will of future generations.
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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.
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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.
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Stothard learned the art of combining colors by closely studying butterflies wings he would often say that no one knew what he owed to these tiny insects. A burnt stick and a barn door served Wilkie in lieu of pencil and canvas.
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Energy of will may be defined to be the very central power of character in a man.
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Practical wisdom is only to be learned in the school of experience. Precepts and instruction are useful so far as they go, but, without the discipline of real life, they remain of the nature of theory only.
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If character be irrecoverably lost, then indeed there will be nothing left worth saving.
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Hope... is the companion of power, and the mother of success for who so hopes has within him the gift of miracles.
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No laws, however stringent, can make the idle industrious, the thriftless provident, or the drunken sober.
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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.
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There are many counterfeits of character, but the genuine article is difficult to be mistaken.
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The great high-road of human welfare lies along the old highway of steadfast welldoing and they who are the most persistent, and work in the truest spirit, will invariably be the most successful.
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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.
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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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The very greatest things - great thoughts, discoveries, inventions - have usually been nurtured in hardship, often pondered over in sorrow, and at length established with difficulty.
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Self-control is only courage under another form. It may also be regarded as the primary essence of character.
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Lost wealth may be replaced by industry, lost knowledge by study, lost health by temperance or medicine, but lost time is gone forever.
Samuel Smiles
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The life of a good man is at the same time the most eloquent lesson of virtue and the most severe reproof of vice.
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The brave man is an inspiration to the weak, and compels them, as it were, to follow him.
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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.
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