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To set a lofty example is the richest bequest a man can leave behind.

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
Bequest
Richest
Lofty
Behinds
Behind
Leave
Example
Men

More quotes by Samuel Smiles

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Sympathy is the golden key that unlocks the hearts of others.
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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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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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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.
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Diligence, above all, is the mother of good luck.
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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 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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The noble people will be nobly ruled, and the ignorant and corrupt ignobly.
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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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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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Work is one of the best educators of practical character.
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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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Self-control is only courage under another form. It may also be regarded as the primary essence of character.
Samuel Smiles
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A fig-tree looking on a fig-tree becometh fruitful, says the Arabian proverb. And so it is with children their first great instructor is example.
Samuel Smiles
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Example teaches better than precept. It is the best modeler of the character of men and women. To set a lofty example is the richest bequest a man can leave behind him.
Samuel Smiles
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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
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The egotist is next door to a fanatic.
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A woman's best qualities do not reside in her intellect, but in her affections. She gives refreshment by her sympathies, rather than by her knowledge.
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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.
Samuel Smiles