Samuel Smiles
Scottish author and reformer, 1812-1904
60 quotes.
Quotes by Samuel Smiles
- Accident does very little towards the production of any great result in life.
- An appointment is a contract, express or implied, and he who does not keep it breaks faith, as well as dishonestly uses other people's time, and thus inevitably loses character.
- As work is our life, show me what you can do, and I will show you what you are.
- Cheerfulness is also an excellent wearing quality. It has been called the bright weather of the heart.
- 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.
- Conduct yourself so as to deserve the best that can come to you, and the consciousness of your own proper behaviour will keep you in spirits if it should not come.
- Energy of character has always a power to evoke energy in others.
- Energy of will--self-originating force--is the soul of every great character.
- Every great work is the result of vast preparatory training.
- Genius is but a capability of labouring intensely: it is the power of making great and sustained efforts.
- Gentleness is indeed the best test of gentlemanliness.
- Good actions give strength to ourselves, and inspire good actions in others.
- Good example always brings forth good fruits.
- Great results cannot be achieved at once; and we must be satisfied to advance in life as we walk, step by step.
- Happiness consists in the enjoyment of little pleasures scattered along the common path of life, which, in the eager search for some great and exciting joy, we are apt to overlook.
- He who never made a mistake never made a discovery.
- Honorable industry always travels the same road with enjoyment and duty, and progress is altogether impossible without it.
- Hope is like the sun, which, as we journey toward it, casts the shadow of our burden behind us.
- Human life consists of a succession of small events, each of which is comparatively unimportant, and yet the happiness and success of every man depends upon the manner in which these small events are dealt with.
- If you have great talents, industry will improve them; if you have but moderate abilities, industry will supply their deficiencies.
- In companionship with the good, growing natures will always find their best nourishment; while companionship with the bad will only be fruitful in mischief.
- It is a mistake to suppose that men succeed through success; they much oftener succeed through failure.
- It is not ease, but effort,--not facility, but difficulty, that 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.
- Knowledge conquered by labour becomes a possession--a property entirely our own.
- Labor is the best test of the energies of men, and furnishes an admirable training for practical wisdom.
- Life will always be, to a great extent, what we ourselves make it.
- Live with persons of elevated characters, and you will feel lifted and lighted up in them: "Live with wolves," says the Spanish proverb, "and you will learn to howl.
- Luck, says an American writer, is ever waiting for something to turn up; Labour, with keen eye and strong will, always turns up something.
- Manners are the ornament of action.
- Men of sterling character have the courage to speak the truth, even when it is unpopular.
- Men who are resolved to find a way for themselves, will always find opportunities enough; and if they do not lie ready to their hand, they will make them.
- National progress is the sum of individual industry, energy, and uprightness, as national decay is of individual idleness, selfishness, and vice.
- Necessity, oftener than facility, has been the mother of invention; and the most prolific school of all has been the school of difficulty.
- Nothing can compensate for the loss of hope in a man: it entirely changes the character.
- Our best light must be made life, and our best thought action.
- Purposes, like eggs, unless they be hatched into action, will run into decay.
- Resist manfully, and the first decision will give strength for life; repeated, it will become a habit.
- Sloth never made its mark in the world, and never will.
- Small men may be envious of their fellows, but really great men seek out and love each other.
- Success in that sphere of life is achieved less by talent than by temper, less by genius than by character.