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
Courage is by no means incompatible with tenderness. On the contrary, gentleness and tenderness have been found to characterize the men, no less than the women, who have done the most courageous deeds.
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.
The cheapest of all things is kindness, its exercise requiring the least possible trouble and self-sacrifice. Win hearts, said Burleigh to Queen Elizabeth, and you have all men's hearts and purses.
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.
Persons with comparatively moderate powers will accomplish much, if they apply themselves wholly and indefatigably to one thing at a time.
Time is of no account with great thoughts. They are as fresh today as when they first passed through their author's minds, ages ago.
Cecil's dispatch of business was extraordinary, his maxim being, "The shortest way to do many things is to do only one thing at once."
Marriage like government is a series of compromises. One must give and take, repair and restrain, endure and be patient.
The career of a great man remains an enduring monument of human energy. The man dies and disappears, but his thoughts and acts survive and leave an indelible stamp upon his race.
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.
An intense anticipation itself transforms possibility into reality; our desires being often but precursors of the things which we are capable of performing.
It is natural to admire and revere really great men. They hallow the nation to which they belong, and lift up not only all who live in their time, but those who live after them. Their great example becomes the common heritage of their race; and their great deeds and great thoughts are the most glorious legacies of mankind.
Though an inheritance of acres may be bequeathed, an inheritance of knowledge and wisdom cannot. The wealthy man may pay others for doing his work for him; but it is impossible to get his thinking done for him by another, or to purchase any kind of self-culture.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. But all play and no work makes him something worse.