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
Length of years is no proper test of length of life. A man's life is to be measured by what he does in it and what he feels in it.
Enthusiasm... the sustaining power of all great action.
Progress, 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.
The shortest way to do many things is to do only one thing at once.
It is not ease but effort, not facility but difficult, that makes man. There is perhaps no station in life in which difficulties do not have to be encountered and overcome before any decided means of success can be achieved.
Hope...is the companion of power, and the mother of success; for who so hopes has within him the gift of miracles.
Hope is the companion of power, and mother of success; for who so hopes strongly has within him the gift of miracles.
Character is undergoing constant change, for better or for worse--either being elevated on the one hand, or degraded on the other.
The great high-road of human welfare lies along the old highway of steadfast, well-doing; and they who are the most persistent, and work in the truest spirit, will invariably be the most successful; success treads on the heels of every right effort.
All experiences of life seems to prove that the impediments thrown in the way of the human advancement may for the most part be overcome by steady good conduct, honest zeal, activity, perseverance and above all, by a determined resolution to surmount.
Good sense, disciplined by experience and inspired by goodness, issues in practical wisdom.
Childhood is like a mirror, which reflects in after life the images first presented to it.
A fig-tree looking on a fig-tree becometh fruitful," says the Arabian proverb. And so it is with children; their first great instructor is example.
True politeness is consideration for the opinions of others. It has been said of dogmatism that it is only puppyism come to its full growth; and certainly the worst form this quality can assume is that of opinionativeness and arrogance.