Quote

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.

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
Force
Drudgery
Energy
Upward
Every
Enables
Way
Station
Men
Dry
Life
Stations
Details
Irksome
Balance
Onward

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Men often discover their affinity to each other by the mutual love they have for a book.
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Those who have most to do, and are willing to work, will find the most time.
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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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Knowledge conquered by labor becomes a possession -a property entirely our own.
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The duty of helping one's self in the highest sense involves the helping of one's neighbors.
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If character be irrecoverably lost, then indeed there will be nothing left worth saving.
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Manners are the ornament of action.
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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.
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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.
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The greatest slave is not he who is ruled by a despot, great though that evil be, but he who is in the thrall of his own moral ignorance, selfishness, and vice.
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Life will always be to a large extent what we ourselves make it.
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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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Lost wealth may be replaced by industry, lost knowledge by study, lost health by temperance or medicine, but lost time is gone forever.
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It will generally be found that men who are constantly lamenting their ill luck are only reaping the consequences of their own neglect, mismanagement, and improvidence, or want of application.
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The wise man... if he would live at peace with others, he will bear and forbear.
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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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All life is a struggle.... Under competition the lazy man is put under the necessity of exerting himself and if he will not exert himself, he must fall behind. If he do not work, neither shall he eat.
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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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Courage is by no means incompatible with tenderness. On the contrary, gentleness and tenderness have been found to characterize the men, no less than the women, who have done the most courageous deeds.
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Riches are oftener an impediment than a stimulus to action and in many cases they are quite as much a misfortune as a blessing.
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