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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
Quite
Impediments
Action
Misfortune
Many
Stimulus
Much
Misfortunes
Riches
Blessing
Cases
Oftener
Wealth
Impediment
More quotes by Samuel Smiles
Diligence, above all, is the mother of good luck.
Samuel Smiles
I see nothing quite conclusive in the art of temporal government, But violence, duplicity and frequent malversation. King rules or barons rule: The strong man strongly and the weak man by caprice. They have but one law, to seize the power and keep it.
Samuel Smiles
Energy of will may be defined to be the very central power of character in a man.
Samuel Smiles
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
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
An intense anticipation itself transforms possibility into reality our desires being often but precursors of the things which we are capable of performing.
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
The principal industrial excellence of the English people lay in their capacity of present exertion for a distant object.
Samuel Smiles
The battle of life is, in most cases, fought uphill and to win it without a struggle were perhaps to win it without honor. If there were no difficulties there would be no success if there were nothing to struggle for, there would be nothing to be achieved.
Samuel Smiles
Woman, above all other educators, educates humanly. Man is the brain, but woman is the heart, of humanity.
Samuel Smiles
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
Opportunities ... fall in the way of every man who is resolved to take advantage of them.
Samuel Smiles
The duty of helping one's self in the highest sense involves the helping of one's neighbors.
Samuel Smiles
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
Self-respect is the noblest garment with which a man can clothe himself, the most elevating feeling with which the mind can be inspired.
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
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.
Samuel Smiles
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
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 high-road of human welfare lies along the old highway of steadfast welldoing and they who are the most persistent, and work in the truest spirit, will invariably be the most successful.
Samuel Smiles