Quote

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

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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
Character
Although
Heart
Rules
Secures
Long
Products
Commands
Always
Genius
Admiration
Life
Respect
Latter
Brain
Command
Running
Former
Power
Product

More quotes by Samuel Smiles

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Necessity, oftener than facility, has been the mother of invention and the most prolific school of all has been the school of difficulty.
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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.
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All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. But all play and no work makes him something worse.
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Men often discover their affinity to each other by the mutual love they have for a book.
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Those who aren't making mistakes probably aren't making anything.
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The noble people will be nobly ruled, and the ignorant and corrupt ignobly.
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For want of self-restraint many men are engaged all their lives in fighting with difficulties of their own making.
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Self-control is only courage under another form.
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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.
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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.
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Life will always be to a large extent what we ourselves make it.
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He who never made a mistake, never made a discovery.
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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.
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Genius, without work, is certainly a dumb oracle, and it is unquestionably true that the men of the highest genius have invariably been found to be amongst the most plodding, hard-working, and intent men -- their chief characteristic apparently consisting simply in their power of laboring more intensely and effectively than others.
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The wise man... if he would live at peace with others, he will bear and forbear.
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If character be irrecoverably lost, then indeed there will be nothing left worth saving.
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No laws, however stringent, can make the idle industrious, the thriftless provident, or the drunken sober.
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Diligence, above all, is the mother of good luck.
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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.
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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.
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