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

More quotes by Samuel Smiles

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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.
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The government of a nation itself is usually found to be but the reflux of the individuals composing it. The government that is ahead of the people will be inevitably dragged down to their level, as the government that is behind them will in the long run be dragged up.
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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.
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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.
Samuel Smiles
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Conscience is that peculiar faculty of the soul which may be called the religious instinct.
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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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Life is of little value unless it be consecrated by duty.
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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.
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Self-control is only courage under another form.
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For want of self-restraint many men are engaged all their lives in fighting with difficulties of their own making.
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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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Woman is the heart of humanity ... its grace, ornament, and solace.
Samuel Smiles
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Success treads on the heels of every right effort and though it is possible to overestimate success to the extent of almost deifying it, as is sometimes done, still in any worthy pursuit it is meritorious.
Samuel Smiles
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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.
Samuel Smiles
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Nothing is more common than energy in money-making, quite independent of any higher object than its accumulation. A man who devotes himself to this pursuit, body and soul, can scarcely fail to become rich. Very little brains will do spend less than you earn add guinea to guinea scrape and save and the pile of gold will gradually rise.
Samuel Smiles
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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.
Samuel Smiles
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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.
Samuel Smiles
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He who recognizes no higher logic than that of the shilling may become a very rich man, and yet remain all the while an exceedingly poor creature for riches are no proof whatever of moral worth, and their glitter often serves only to draw attention to the worthlessness of their possessor, as the glow-worm's light reveals the grub.
Samuel Smiles
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Wisdom and understanding can only become the possession of individual men by travelling the old road of observation, attention, perseverance, and industry.
Samuel Smiles
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It is not ease, but effort-not facility, but difficulty, makes men. There is, perhaps, no station in life in which difficulties have not to be encountered and overcome before any decided measure of success can be achieved.
Samuel Smiles