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
When typhus or cholera breaks out, they tell us that Nobody is to blame. That terrible Nobody! How much he has to answer for. More mischief is done by Nobody than by all the world besides.
The reason why so little is done, is generally because so little is attempted.
Success treads on the heels of every right effort; and though it is possible to overestimate success to the extent of almost deifying it, as is sometimes done, still in any worthy pursuit it is meritorious.
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.
Whatever is done for men takes away from the stimulus and necessity of doing things for themselves. The value of legislative as an agent in human advancement has been much over-estimated. No laws, however stringent, can make the idle industrious, the thriftless provident or the drunken sober.
The experience gathered from books, though often valuable, is but of the nature of learning; whereas, the experience gained from actual life is of the nature of wisdom; and a small store of the latter is worth vastly more than any stock of the former
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.
''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.
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.
To think we are able is almost to be so; to determine upon attainment is frequently attainment itself; earnest resolution has often seemed to have about it almost a savor of omnipotence.
We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery.
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.