Quote

Life is of little value unless it be consecrated by duty.

Samuel Smiles

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Samuel Smiles
Age: 91 †
Born: 1812
Born: December 23
Died: 1904
Died: April 16
Author
Biographer
Journalist
Philosopher
Writer
Haddington
East Lothian
Unless
Duty
Values
Littles
Little
Life
Consecrated
Value

More quotes by Samuel Smiles

Image
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
Image
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
Image
Those who have most to do, and are willing to work, will find the most time.
Samuel Smiles
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Opportunities ... fall in the way of every man who is resolved to take advantage of them.
Samuel Smiles
Image
Labour may be a burden and a chastisement, but it is also an honour and a glory. Without it, nothing can be accomplished.
Samuel Smiles
Image
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
Image
Knowledge conquered by labor becomes a possession -a property entirely our own.
Samuel Smiles
Image
Whatever is done for men takes away from the stimulus and necessity of doing things for themselves. The value of legislative as an agent in human advancement has been much over-estimated. No laws, however stringent, can make the idle industrious, the thriftless provident or the drunken sober.
Samuel Smiles
Image
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
Image
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
Image
The best school of discipline is home. Family life is God's own method of training the young, and homes are very much as women make them.
Samuel Smiles
Image
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
Image
Hope... is the companion of power, and the mother of success for who so hopes has within him the gift of miracles.
Samuel Smiles
Image
Life will always be to a large extent what we ourselves make it.
Samuel Smiles
Image
Sympathy is the golden key that unlocks the hearts of others.
Samuel Smiles
Image
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
Image
Commit a child to the care of a worthless, ignorant woman, and no culture in after-life will remedy the evil you have done.
Samuel Smiles
Image
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