Samuel Smiles Quotes

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

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

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.

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

Where there is a will there is a way.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Self-respect is the noblest garment with which a man can clothe himself, the most elevating feeling with which the mind can be inspired.

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

Good character is property. It is the noblest of all possessions.

Progress however, of the best kind, is comparatively slow. Great results cannot be achieved at once; and we must be satisfied to advance in life as we walk, step by step.

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

Marriage like government is a series of compromises. One must give and take, repair and restrain, endure and be patient.

Character is itself a fortune.

Childhood is like a mirror, which reflects in after life the images first presented to it.

Luck lies in bed, and wishes the postman would bring him news of a legacy; labor turns out at six, and with busy pen or ringing hammer lays the foundation of a competence.

Purposes, like eggs, unless they be hatched into action, will run into rottenness.

Luck whines; labor whistles.

With will one can do anything.

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.

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.

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.

The shortest way to do many things is to do only one thing at once.

He who never made a mistake, never made a discovery.

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.

Enthusiasm..the sustaining power of all great action

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.

Self-control is only courage under another form. It may also be regarded as the primary essence of character.

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

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.

The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual.

The apprenticeship of difficulty is one which the greatest of men have had to serve.

Riches do not constitute any claim to distinction. It is only the vulgar who admire riches as riches.

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.

Labour may be a burden and a chastisement, but it is also an honour and a glory. Without it, nothing can be accomplished.

The greatest slave is not he who is ruled by a despot, great though that evil be, but he who is in the thrall of his own moral ignorance, selfishness, and vice.

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

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.

Manners are the ornament of action.

The tiniest bits of opinion sown in the minds of children in private life afterwards issue forth to the world, and become its public opinion; for nations are gathered out of nurseries.

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

Progress, of the best kind, is comparatively slow

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. But all play and no work makes him something worse.

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.

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

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.