Quote

Enthusiasm..the sustaining power of all great action

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
Acting
Action
Power
Great
Sustaining
Enthusiasm

More quotes by 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
Opportunities ... fall in the way of every man who is resolved to take advantage of them.
Samuel Smiles
Image
It is observed at sea that men are never so much disposed to grumble and mutiny as when least employed. Hence an old captain, when there was nothing else to do, would issue the order to scour the anchor.
Samuel Smiles
Image
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
Image
Work is one of the best educators of practical character.
Samuel Smiles
Image
No laws, however stringent, can make the idle industrious, the thriftless provident, or the drunken sober.
Samuel Smiles
Image
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
Image
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
Image
The life of a good man is at the same time the most eloquent lesson of virtue and the most severe reproof of vice.
Samuel Smiles
Image
One might almost fear, writes a thoughtful woman, seeing how the women of to-day are lightly stirred up to run after some new fashion or faith, that heaven is not so near to them as it was to their mothers and grandmothers.
Samuel Smiles
Image
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.
Samuel Smiles
Image
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
Image
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
Image
The brave man is an inspiration to the weak, and compels them, as it were, to follow him.
Samuel Smiles
Image
Obedience, submission, discipline, courage--these are among the characteristics which make a man.
Samuel Smiles
Image
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
Image
Persons with comparatively moderate powers will accomplish much, if they apply themselves wholly and indefatigably to one thing at a time.
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
The possession of a library, or the free use of it, no more constitutes learning, than the possession of wealth constitutes generosity.
Samuel Smiles
Image
Life will always be to a large extent what we ourselves make it.
Samuel Smiles