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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.
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
Moral
Despots
Though
Ruled
Evil
Selfishness
Great
Vice
Vices
Slave
Ignorance
Thrall
Greatest
Despot
More quotes by Samuel Smiles
The government of a nation itself is usually found to be but the reflux of the individuals composing it. The government that is ahead of the people will be inevitably dragged down to their level, as the government that is behind them will in the long run be dragged up.
Samuel Smiles
Those who aren't making mistakes probably aren't making anything.
Samuel Smiles
The duty of helping one's self in the highest sense involves the helping of one's neighbors.
Samuel Smiles
The very greatest things - great thoughts, discoveries, inventions - have usually been nurtured in hardship, often pondered over in sorrow, and at length established with difficulty.
Samuel Smiles
The noble people will be nobly ruled, and the ignorant and corrupt ignobly.
Samuel Smiles
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.
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 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
For want of self-restraint many men are engaged all their lives in fighting with difficulties of their own making.
Samuel Smiles
Although genius always commands admiration, character most secures respect. The former is more the product of the brain, the latter of heart-power and in the long run it is the heart that rules in life.
Samuel Smiles
Life will always be to a large extent what we ourselves make it.
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
Make good thy standing place, and move the world.
Samuel Smiles
It is natural to admire and revere really great men. They hallow the nation to which they belong, and lift up not only all who live in their time, but those who live after them. Their great example becomes the common heritage of their race and their great deeds and great thoughts are the most glorious legacies of mankind.
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
Life is of little value unless it be consecrated by duty.
Samuel Smiles
So much does the moral health depend upon the moral atmosphere that is breathed, and so great is the influence daily exercised by parents over their children by living a life before their eyes, that perhaps the best system of parental instruction might be summed up in these two words: 'Improve thyself.'
Samuel Smiles
It is a mistake to suppose that men succeed through success they much oftener succeed through failures. Precept, study, advice, and example could never have taught them so well as failure has done.
Samuel Smiles
No laws, however stringent, can make the idle industrious, the thriftless provident, or the drunken sober.
Samuel Smiles
With will one can do anything.
Samuel Smiles
