Top 187 Quotes & Sayings by Samuel Smiles - Page 3

The most influential of all the virtues are those which are the most in request for daily use. They wear the best, and last the longest.

The great high-road of human welfare lies along the old highway of steadfast, well-doing; and they who are the most persistent, and work in the truest spirit, will invariably be the most successful; success treads on the heels of every right effort.

Imitation is for the most part so unconscious that its effects are almost unheeded, but its influence is not the less permanent on that account. It is only when an impressive nature is placed in contact with an impressionable one that the alteration in the character becomes recognizable. Yet even the weakest natures exercise some influence upon those about them. The approximation of feeling, thought, and habit is constant, and the action of example unceasing.

Those who have most to do, and are willing to work, will find the most time.

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.

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.

Self-control is only courage under another form.

Those who aren't making mistakes probably aren't making anything.

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.

The iron rail proved a magicians' road. It virtually reduced England to a sixth of its size. It brought the country nearer to the town and the town to the country.... It energized punctuality, discipline, and attention; and proved a moral teacher by the influence of example.

Woman, above all other educators, educates humanly. Man is the brain, but woman is the heart, of humanity.

Example teaches better than precept. It is the best modeler of the character of men and women. To set a lofty example is the richest bequest a man can leave behind him.

The healthy spirit of self-help created among working people would, more than any other measure, serve to raise them as a class; and this, not by pulling down others, but by levelling them up to a higher and still advancing standard of religion, intelligence, and virtue.

When typhus or cholera breaks out, they tell us that Nobody is to blame. That terrible Nobody! How much he has to answer for. More mischief is done by Nobody than by all the world besides.

Riches are oftener an impediment than a stimulus to action; and in many cases they are quite as much a misfortune as a blessing.

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.'

The possession of a library, or the free use of it, no more constitutes learning, than the possession of wealth constitutes generosity.

There is no act, however trivial, but has its train of consequences.

The noble people will be nobly ruled, and the ignorant and corrupt ignobly.

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.

The principal industrial excellence of the English people lay in their capacity of present exertion for a distant object.

Good sense, disciplined by experience and inspired by goodness, issues in practical wisdom.

Any number of depraved units cannot form a great nation.

Men often discover their affinity to each other by the mutual love they have for a book.

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.

Fortune has often been blamed for her blindness; but fortune is not so blind as men are. Those who look into practical life will find that fortune is usually on the side of the industrious, as the winds and waves are on the side of the best navigators.

This extraordinary metal, the soul of every manufacture, and the mainspring perhaps of civilised society. Of iron.

England was nothing, compared to continental nations until she had become commercial... until about the middle of the last century, when a number of ingenious and inventive men, without apparent relation to each other, arose in various parts of the kingdom, succeeded in giving an immense impulse to all the branches of the national industry; the result of which has been a harvest of wealth and prosperity, perhaps without a parallel in the history of the world.

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.

National progress is the sum of individual industry, energy, and uprightness, as national decay is of individual idleness, selfishness, and vice.

The influence of woman is the same everywhere. Her condition influences the morals, manners, and character of the people of all countries. Where she is debased, society is debased; where she is morally pure and enlightened, society will be proportionately elevated.

It is not eminent talent that is required to ensure success in any pursuit, so much as purpose-not merely the power to achieve, but the will to labour energetically and perseveringly. Hence energy of will may be defined to be the very central power of character in a man-in a word, it is the Man himself.

The brave man is an inspiration to the weak, and compels them, as it were, to follow him.

The great high-road of human welfare lies along the old highway of steadfast welldoing; and they who are the most persistent, and work in the truest spirit, will invariably be the most successful.

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.

Great men are always exceptional men; and greatness itself is but comparative. Indeed, the range of most men in life is so limited that very few have the opportunity of being great.

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.

Thus the brave and aspiring life of one man lights a flame in the minds of others of like faculties and impulse; and where there is equally vigorous effort, like distinction and success will almost surely follow. Thus the chain of example is carried down through time in an endless succession of links--admiration exciting imitation, and perpetuating the true aristocracy of genius.

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

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.

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."

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.

What we are accustomed to decry as great social evils, will, for the most part, be found to be only the out-growth of our own perverted life; and though we may endeavor to cut them down and extirpate them by means of law, they will only spring up again with fresh luxuriance in some other form, unless the conditions of human life and character are radically improved.

Necessity is always the first stimulus to industry, and those who conduct it with prudence, perseverance and energy will rarely fail. Viewed in this light, the necessity of labor is not a chastisement, but a blessing,--the very root and spring of all that we call progress in individuals and civilization in nations.

Necessity, oftener than facility, has been the mother of invention; and the most prolific school of all has been the school of difficulty.

Commonplace though it may appear, this doing of one's duty embodies the highest ideal of life and character. There may be nothing heroic about it; but the common lot of men is not heroic.

The egotist is next door to a fanatic.

If character be irrecoverably lost, then indeed there will be nothing left worth saving.

Knowledge conquered by labor becomes a possession -a property entirely our own.

Sympathy is the golden key that unlocks the hearts of others.

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.

All experiences of life seems to prove that the impediments thrown in the way of the human advancement may for the most part be overcome by steady good conduct, honest zeal, activity, perseverance and above all, by a determined resolution to surmount.

Manners are the ornament of action.

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.

Honorable industry always travels the same road with enjoyment and duty, and progress is altogether impossible without it.

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.

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.

All that is great in man comes through work; and civilization is its product.

Character is undergoing constant change, for better or for worse--either being elevated on the one hand, or degraded on the other.

Diligence, above all, is the mother of good luck.