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It is a mistake to suppose that men succeed through success they much oftener succeed through failures. Precept, study, advice, and example could never have taught them so well as failure has done.

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
Much
Example
Congratulations
Never
Taught
Failures
Men
Mistake
Suppose
Study
Succeed
Success
Advice
Wells
Failure
Well
Positive
Oftener
Done
Motivational
Precept

More quotes by Samuel Smiles

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Labor is still, and ever will be, the inevitable price set upon everything which is valuable.
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Manners are the ornament of action.
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Diligence, above all, is the mother of good luck.
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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.
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Work is one of the best educators of practical character.
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Hope is like the sun, which, as we journey toward it, casts the shadow of our burden behind us.
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The egotist is next door to a fanatic.
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Help from without is often enfeebling in its effects, but help from within invariably invigorates.
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The tiniest bits of opinion sown in the minds of children in private life afterwards issue forth to the world, and become its public opinion for nations are gathered out of nurseries.
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I see nothing quite conclusive in the art of temporal government, But violence, duplicity and frequent malversation. King rules or barons rule: The strong man strongly and the weak man by caprice. They have but one law, to seize the power and keep it.
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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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Labour may be a burden and a chastisement, but it is also an honour and a glory. Without it, nothing can be accomplished.
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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.
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No laws, however stringent, can make the idle industrious, the thriftless provident, or the drunken sober. Such reforms can only be effected by means of individual action, economy and self-denial by better habits, rather than by greater rights.
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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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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. . . .
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Commit a child to the care of a worthless, ignorant woman, and no culture in after-life will remedy the evil you have done.
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Life will always be to a large extent what we ourselves make it.
Samuel Smiles
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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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The path of success in business is invariably the path of common-sense. Nothwithstanding all that is said about lucky hits, the best kind of success in every man's life is not that which comes by accident. The only good time coming we are justified in hoping for is that which we are capable of making for ourselves.
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