Samuel Smiles famous quotes

Where there is a will there is a way,
-- Samuel Smiles

#Way

The battle of life is, in most cases, fought uphill; and to win it without a struggle were perhaps to win it without honor. If there were no difficulties there would be no success; if there were nothing to struggle for, there would be nothing to be achieved.
-- Samuel Smiles

#Life #Success #Struggle

Lost wealth may be replaced by industry, lost knowledge by study, lost health by temperance or medicine, but lost time is gone forever.
-- Samuel Smiles

#Time #Business #Medicine

Life will always be to a large extent what we ourselves make it.
-- Samuel Smiles

#Inspirational #Life #Smart

The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual; and, exhibited in the lives of many, it constitutes the true source of national vigour and strength. Help from without is often enfeebling in its effects, but help from within invariably invigorates
-- Samuel Smiles

#Self #Roots #Growth

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

#Adversity #Discovery #Sorrow

Hope is like the sun, which, as we journey toward it, casts the shadow of our burden behind us.
-- Samuel Smiles

#Inspirational #Hope #Motivation

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

#Mistake #Congratulations #Men

Hope... is the companion of power, and the mother of success; for who so hopes has within him the gift of miracles.
-- Samuel Smiles

#Inspirational #Life #Success

We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success. We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery.
-- Samuel Smiles

#Inspirational #Wisdom #Mistake

With will one can do anything.
-- Samuel Smiles

#Motivation

If we opened our minds to enjoyment, we might find tranquil pleasures spread about us on every side. We might live with the angels that visit us on every sunbeam, and sit with the fairies who wait on every flower.
-- Samuel Smiles

#Flower #Angel #Waiting

Enthusiasm..the sustaining power of all great action
-- Samuel Smiles

#Enthusiasm #Action

It is possible that the scrupulously honest man may not grow rich so fast as the unscrupulous and dishonest one; but the success will be of a truer kind, earned without fraud or injustice. And even though a man should for a time be unsuccessful, still he must be honest: better lose all and save character. For character is itself a fortune. . . .
-- Samuel Smiles

#Honesty #Character #Men

The reason why so little is done, is generally because so little is attempted.
-- Samuel Smiles

#Done #Littles #Action

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

#Life #Men #Effort

To set a lofty example is the richest bequest a man can leave behind.
-- Samuel Smiles

#Men #Example #Behinds

Good character is property. It is the noblest of all possessions.
-- Samuel Smiles

#Character #Good Character #Possession

No laws, however stringent, can make the idle industrious, the thriftless provident, or the drunken sober.
-- Samuel Smiles

#Law #Sober #Idle

The duty of helping one's self in the highest sense involves the helping of one's neighbors.
-- Samuel Smiles

#Kindness #Helping Others #Self

Labor is still, and ever will be, the inevitable price set upon everything which is valuable.
-- Samuel Smiles

#Inevitable #Valuable #Labor

Man cannot aspire if he looked down; if he rise, he must look up.
-- Samuel Smiles

#Men #Vision #Looks

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

#Work #Men #Suffering

Wisdom and understanding can only become the possession of individual men by travelling the old road of observation, attention, perseverance, and industry.
-- Samuel Smiles

#Wisdom #Perseverance #Journey

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

#Character #Miracle #Age

He who never made a mistake, never made a discovery.
-- Samuel Smiles

#Inspirational #Motivational #Smile

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

#Wisdom #Nature #Book

Liberty is the result of free individual action,energy and independence.
-- Samuel Smiles

#Independence #Liberty #Energy

Those who aren't making mistakes probably aren't making anything.
-- Samuel Smiles

#Mistake #Making Mistakes #Daring

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

#Queens #Kindness #Heart

No good thing is ever lost. Nothing dies, not even life which gives up one form only to resume another. No good action, no good example dies. It lives forever in our race. While the frame moulders and disappears, the deed leaves an indelible stamp, and molds the very thought and will of future generations.
-- Samuel Smiles

#Giving Up #Race #Forever

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

#Mean #Men #Deeds

Make good thy standing place, and move the world.
-- Samuel Smiles

#Moving #World #Standing

It is the close observation of little things which is the secret of success in business, in art, in science, and in every pursuit of life.
-- Samuel Smiles

#Art #Secret #Business Success

Obedience, submission, discipline, courage--these are among the characteristics which make a man.
-- Samuel Smiles

#Men #Discipline #Obedience

Those who are the most persistent, and work in the true spirit, will invariably be the most successful.
-- Samuel Smiles

#Dream #Successful #Spirit

For want of self-restraint many men are engaged all their lives in fighting with difficulties of their own making.
-- Samuel Smiles

#Fighting #Men #Self

Mere political reform will not cure the manifold evils which now afflict society. There requires a social reform, a domestic reform, an individual reform.
-- Samuel Smiles

#Evil #Political #Reform

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

#Book #Men #Mutual Love

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

#Train #Consequence

It's not enough to have a dream, Unless you're willing to pursue it. It's not enough to know what's right, Unless you're strong enough to do it. It's not enough to learn the truth, Unless you also learn to live it. It's not enough to reach for love, Unless you care enough to give it Men who are resolved to find a way for themselves will always find opportunities enough; and if they do not find them, they will make them.
-- Samuel Smiles

#Dream #Strong #Opportunity

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

#May #Glory #Burden

Work is one of the best educators of practical character.
-- Samuel Smiles

#Character #Educator #Practicals

He who labours not, cannot enjoy the reward of labour.
-- Samuel Smiles

#Rewards #Enjoy #Labour

Though an inheritance of acres may be bequeathed, an inheritance of knowledge and wisdom cannot. The wealthy man may pay others for doing his work for him; but it is impossible to get his thinking done for him by another, or to purchase any kind of self-culture.
-- Samuel Smiles

#Men #Thinking #Self

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

#Men #Light #Attention

The egotist is next door to a fanatic.
-- Samuel Smiles

#Doors #Next #Egotism

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.
-- Samuel Smiles

#Character #Men #Example

There are many persons of whom it may be said that they have no other possession in the world but their character, and yet they stand as firmly upon it as any crowned king.
-- Samuel Smiles

#Kings #Character #May

It is observed at sea that men are never so much disposed to grumble and mutiny as when least employed. Hence an old captain, when there was nothing else to do, would issue the order to "scour the anchor.
-- Samuel Smiles

#Men #Order #Anchors

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

#Men #Civilization

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

#Mother #School #Invention

It is the close observation of little things which is the secret of success in business, in art, in science, and in every pursuit in life. Human knowledge is but an accumulation of small facts made by successive generations of men--the little bits of knowledge and experience carefully treasured up by them growing at length into a mighty pyramid.
-- Samuel Smiles

#Art #Men #Pyramids

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

#Selfish #Progress #Decay

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

#Work #Willing

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

#Father #Giving #Mentor