Samuel Smiles
Samuel Smiles
Samuel Smiles, was a Scottish author and government reformer who campaigned on a Chartist platform. But he concluded that more progress would come from new attitudes than from new laws. His masterpiece, Self-Help, promoted thrift and claimed that poverty was caused largely by irresponsible habits, while also attacking materialism and laissez-faire government. It has been called "the bible of mid-Victorian liberalism", and it raised Smiles to celebrity status almost overnight...
NationalityScottish
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth23 December 1812
He who never made a mistake, never made a discovery.
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.
Man cannot aspire if he looked down; if he rise, he must look up.
To set a lofty example is the richest bequest a man can leave behind.
The duty of helping one's self in the highest sense involves the helping of one's neighbors.
The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual.
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.
Good character is property. It is the noblest of all possessions.
Labour may be a burden and a chastisement, but it is also an honour and a glory. Without it, nothing can be accomplished.
"Where there is a will there is a way" is an old true saying. He who resolves upon doing a thing, by that very resolution often scales the barriers to it and secures its achievement. To think we are able is almost to be so - to determine upon attainment is frequently attainment itself.
Sympathy is the golden key that unlocks the hearts of others.
Labor is still, and ever will be, the inevitable price set upon everything which is valuable.
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. . . .
Progress, of the best kind, is comparatively slow