Samuel Smiles - Life Quotes

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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
The life of a good man is at the same time the most eloquent lesson of virtue and the most severe reproof of vice.

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

Samuel Smiles
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.

Samuel Smiles
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
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.

Samuel Smiles
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.

Samuel Smiles
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
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.

Samuel Smiles
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
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.

Samuel Smiles
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
The path of success in business is invariably the path of common-sense. Nothwithstanding all that is said about "lucky hits," the best kind of success in every man's life is not that which comes by accident. The only "good time coming" we are justified in hoping for is that which we are capable of making for ourselves.

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

Samuel Smiles
Home is the first and most important school of character. It is there that every human being receives his best moral training, or his worst; for it is there that he imbibes those principles of conduct which endure through manhood, and cease only with life.

Samuel Smiles
The great lesson of biography is to show what man can be and do at his best. A noble life put fairly on record acts like an inspiration to others.

Samuel Smiles
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.

Samuel Smiles
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
The battle of life is, in most cases, fought uphill; and to win it without a struggle were, perhaps, to win it without honor.

Samuel Smiles
The crown and glory of life is Character. It is the noblest possession of a man, constituting a rank in itself, and an estate in the general goodwill; dignifying every station, and exalting every position in society. It exercises a greater power than wealth, and secures all the honour without the jealousies of fame. It carries with it an influence which always tells; for it is the result of proved honour, rectitude, and consistency — qualities which, perhaps more than any other, command the general confidence and respect of mankind.

Samuel Smiles
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.

Samuel Smiles
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.

Samuel Smiles
The Railway [is] now the principal means of communication in all civilized countries. It has enhanced the celerity of time, and imparted a new series of conditions to every rank of life.

Samuel Smiles
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.'

Samuel Smiles