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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
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Haddington
East Lothian
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Fairly
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Noble
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More quotes by Samuel Smiles
The noble people will be nobly ruled, and the ignorant and corrupt ignobly.
Samuel Smiles
Help from without is often enfeebling in its effects, but help from within invariably invigorates.
Samuel Smiles
Stothard learned the art of combining colors by closely studying butterflies wings he would often say that no one knew what he owed to these tiny insects. A burnt stick and a barn door served Wilkie in lieu of pencil and canvas.
Samuel Smiles
Politeness goes far, yet costs nothing.
Samuel Smiles
With will one can do anything.
Samuel Smiles
Necessity, oftener than facility, has been the mother of invention and the most prolific school of all has been the school of difficulty.
Samuel Smiles
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
To set a lofty example is the richest bequest a man can leave behind.
Samuel Smiles
For want of self-restraint many men are engaged all their lives in fighting with difficulties of their own making, and rendering success impossible by their own cross-grained ungentleness whilst others, it may be much less gifted, make their way and achieve success by simple patience, equanimity, and self-control.
Samuel Smiles
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
Those who aren't making mistakes probably aren't making anything.
Samuel Smiles
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
Opportunities ... fall in the way of every man who is resolved to take advantage of them.
Samuel Smiles
Life will always be to a large extent what we ourselves make it.
Samuel Smiles
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
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
All life is a struggle.... Under competition the lazy man is put under the necessity of exerting himself and if he will not exert himself, he must fall behind. If he do not work, neither shall he eat.
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
Cecil's dispatch of business was extraordinary, his maxim being, The shortest way to do many things is to do only one thing at once.
Samuel Smiles
Even happiness itself may become habitual. There is a habit of looking at the bright side of things, and also of looking at the dark side.
Samuel Smiles
