Quote

Character is itself a fortune.

Samuel Smiles

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Samuel Smiles
Age: 91 †
Born: 1812
Born: December 23
Died: 1904
Died: April 16
Author
Biographer
Journalist
Philosopher
Writer
Haddington
East Lothian
Fortune
Character

More quotes by Samuel Smiles

Image
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. But all play and no work makes him something worse.
Samuel Smiles
Image
Hope is like the sun, which, as we journey toward it, casts the shadow of our burden behind us.
Samuel Smiles
Image
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
Image
Self-control is only courage under another form. It may also be regarded as the primary essence of character.
Samuel Smiles
Image
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.
Samuel Smiles
Image
The wise man... if he would live at peace with others, he will bear and forbear.
Samuel Smiles
Image
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
Image
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.
Samuel Smiles
Image
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
Image
Alexander the Great valued learning so highly, that he used to say he was more indebted to Aristotle for giving him knowledge than to his father Philip for life.
Samuel Smiles
Image
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.
Samuel Smiles
Image
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.
Samuel Smiles
Image
There are many counterfeits of character, but the genuine article is difficult to be mistaken.
Samuel Smiles
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Diligence, above all, is the mother of good luck.
Samuel Smiles
Image
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
Image
When typhus or cholera breaks out, they tell us that Nobody is to blame. That terrible Nobody! How much he has to answer for. More mischief is done by Nobody than by all the world besides.
Samuel Smiles
Image
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