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Persons with comparatively moderate powers will accomplish much, if they apply themselves wholly and indefatigably to one thing at a time.

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
Time
Moderates
Wholly
Apply
Powers
Accomplish
Persons
Thing
Comparatively
Much
Moderate

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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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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.
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The egotist is next door to a fanatic.
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No laws, however stringent, can make the idle industrious, the thriftless provident, or the drunken sober.
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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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Woman, above all other educators, educates humanly. Man is the brain, but woman is the heart, of humanity.
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Sympathy is the golden key that unlocks the hearts of others.
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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.
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Necessity, oftener than facility, has been the mother of invention and the most prolific school of all has been the school of difficulty.
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Self-control is only courage under another form.
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To set a lofty example is the richest bequest a man can leave behind.
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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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Luck lies in bed, and wishes the postman would bring him news of a legacy labor turns out at six, and with busy pen or ringing hammer lays the foundation of a competence.
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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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He who never made a mistake, never made a discovery.
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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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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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An intense anticipation itself transforms possibility into reality our desires being often but precursors of the things which we are capable of performing.
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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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The great and good do no die even in this world. Embalmed in books, their spirits walk abroad. The book is a living voice. It is an intellect to which one still listens.
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