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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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Samuel Smiles
Age: 91 †
Born: 1812
Born: December 23
Died: 1904
Died: April 16
Author
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Journalist
Philosopher
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Haddington
East Lothian
Children
Proverb
Great
Fruitful
Tree
Example
Says
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Looking
Figs
Firsts
Arabian
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More quotes by Samuel Smiles
An intense anticipation itself transforms possibility into reality our desires being often but precursors of the things which we are capable of performing.
Samuel Smiles
The experience gathered from books, though often valuable, is but the nature of learning whereas the experience gained from actual life is one of the nature of wisdom.
Samuel Smiles
Enthusiasm..the sustaining power of all great action
Samuel Smiles
Help from without is often enfeebling in its effects, but help from within invariably invigorates.
Samuel Smiles
Make good thy standing place, and move the world.
Samuel Smiles
Labor is still, and ever will be, the inevitable price set upon everything which is valuable.
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
It is energy - the central element of which is will - that produces the miracle that is enthusiasm in all ages. Everywhere it is what is called force of character and the sustaining power of all great action
Samuel Smiles
Persons with comparatively moderate powers will accomplish much, if they apply themselves wholly and indefatigably to one thing at a time.
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
The noble people will be nobly ruled, and the ignorant and corrupt ignobly.
Samuel Smiles
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.
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
Energy enables a man to force his way through irksome drudgery and dry details and caries him onward and upward to every station in life.
Samuel Smiles
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
It will generally be found that men who are constantly lamenting their ill luck are only reaping the consequences of their own neglect, mismanagement, and improvidence, or want of application.
Samuel Smiles
Riches are oftener an impediment than a stimulus to action and in many cases they are quite as much a misfortune as a blessing.
Samuel Smiles
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
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
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
