Quote

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

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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
Form
Personal
Institutions
Character
Question
Civilization
States
Nations
Prove
Men
State
Depends
Upon
Nation
Aggregate
Less
Worth
Serves
Individual
Conditions
Depend
Experience
Strength
Improvement

More quotes by Samuel Smiles

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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.
Samuel Smiles
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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
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Those who have most to do, and are willing to work, will find the most time.
Samuel Smiles
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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
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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
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Life is of little value unless it be consecrated by duty.
Samuel Smiles
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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
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The noble people will be nobly ruled, and the ignorant and corrupt ignobly.
Samuel Smiles
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The great leader attracts to himself men of kindred character, drawing them towards him as the loadstone draws iron.
Samuel Smiles
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Opportunities ... fall in the way of every man who is resolved to take advantage of them.
Samuel Smiles
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Manners are the ornament of action.
Samuel Smiles
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Self-control is only courage under another form.
Samuel Smiles
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Help from without is often enfeebling in its effects, but help from within invariably invigorates.
Samuel Smiles
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Work is one of the best educators of practical character.
Samuel Smiles
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Make good thy standing place, and move the world.
Samuel Smiles
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He who recognizes no higher logic than that of the shilling may become a very rich man, and yet remain all the while an exceedingly poor creature for riches are no proof whatever of moral worth, and their glitter often serves only to draw attention to the worthlessness of their possessor, as the glow-worm's light reveals the grub.
Samuel Smiles
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No laws, however stringent, can make the idle industrious, the thriftless provident, or the drunken sober.
Samuel Smiles
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It is not ease, but effort-not facility, but difficulty, makes men. There is, perhaps, no station in life in which difficulties have not to be encountered and overcome before any decided measure of success can be achieved.
Samuel Smiles
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Politeness goes far, yet costs nothing.
Samuel Smiles
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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