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
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.
The shortest way to do many things is to do one at a time.
He who never made a mistake, never made a discovery.
The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual.
We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success. 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.
It will generally be found that men who are constantly lamenting their ill luck are only reaping the consequences of their own neglect, mismanagement, and improvidence, or want of application.
Hope is like the sun, which, as we journey toward it, casts the shadow of our burden behind us.
Hope... is the companion of power, and the mother of success; for who so hopes has within him the gift of miracles.
Life will always be to a large extent what we ourselves make it.
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.
Admiration of great men, living or dead, naturally evokes imitation of them in a greater or less degree.
I'm as happy a man as any in the world, for the whole world seems to smile upon me!
Character is property. It is the noblest of possessions.
It is idleness that is the curse of man - not labour. Idleness eats the heart out of men as of nations, and consumes them as rust does iron.