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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.
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
Riches
Blessing
Cases
Oftener
Wealth
Impediment
Quite
Impediments
Action
Misfortune
Many
Stimulus
Much
Misfortunes
More quotes by Samuel Smiles
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. . . .
Samuel Smiles
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.
Samuel Smiles
No laws, however stringent, can make the idle industrious, the thriftless provident, or the drunken sober.
Samuel Smiles
Where there is a will there is a way is an old true saying. He who resolves upon doing a thing, by that very resolution often scales the barriers to it and secures its achievement. To think we are able is almost to be so - to determine upon attainment is frequently attainment itself.
Samuel Smiles
Men cannot be raised in masses as the mountains were in he early geological states of the world. They must be dealt with as units for it is only by the elevation of individuals that the elevation of the masses can be effectively secured.
Samuel Smiles
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
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.
Samuel Smiles
Opportunities ... fall in the way of every man who is resolved to take advantage of them.
Samuel Smiles
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
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
Men must necessarily be the active agents of their own well-being and well-doing they themselves must in the very nature of things be their own best helpers.
Samuel Smiles
The experience gathered from books, though often valuable, is but the nature of learning whereas the experience gained from actual life is one of the nature of wisdom.
Samuel Smiles
Self-control is only courage under another form.
Samuel Smiles
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
Self-control is only courage under another form. It may also be regarded as the primary essence of character.
Samuel Smiles
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
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
Even happiness itself may become habitual. There is a habit of looking at the bright side of things, and also of looking at the dark side.
Samuel Smiles
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.
Samuel Smiles
Practical wisdom is only to be learned in the school of experience. Precepts and instruction are useful so far as they go, but, without the discipline of real life, they remain of the nature of theory only.
Samuel Smiles
