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The great lesson of biography is to show what man can be and do at his best. A noble life put fairly on record acts like an inspiration to others.
Samuel Smiles
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Samuel Smiles
Age: 91 †
Born: 1812
Born: December 23
Died: 1904
Died: April 16
Author
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Philosopher
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Haddington
East Lothian
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Noble
More quotes by Samuel Smiles
There are many counterfeits of character, but the genuine article is difficult to be mistaken.
Samuel Smiles
The great leader attracts to himself men of kindred character, drawing them towards him as the loadstone draws iron.
Samuel Smiles
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.
Samuel Smiles
No laws, however stringent, can make the idle industrious, the thriftless provident, or the drunken sober.
Samuel Smiles
The work of many of the greatest men, inspired by duty, has been done amidst suffering and trial and difficulty. They have struggled against the tide, and reached the shore exhausted.
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
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
Enthusiasm..the sustaining power of all great action
Samuel Smiles
Labor is still, and ever will be, the inevitable price set upon everything which is valuable.
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
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
Men often discover their affinity to each other by the mutual love they have for a book.
Samuel Smiles
Wisdom and understanding can only become the possession of individual men by travelling the old road of observation, attention, perseverance, and industry.
Samuel Smiles
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
With will one can do anything.
Samuel Smiles
The path of success in business is invariably the path of common-sense. Nothwithstanding all that is said about lucky hits, the best kind of success in every man's life is not that which comes by accident. The only good time coming we are justified in hoping for is that which we are capable of making for ourselves.
Samuel Smiles
For want of self-restraint many men are engaged all their lives in fighting with difficulties of their own making.
Samuel Smiles
The great and good do no die even in this world. Embalmed in books, their spirits walk abroad. The book is a living voice. It is an intellect to which one still listens.
Samuel Smiles
Those who have most to do, and are willing to work, will find the most time.
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
