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
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.
National progress is the sum of individual industry, energy, and uprightness, as national decay is of individual idleness, selfishness, and vice.
Honorable industry always travels the same road with enjoyment and duty, and progress is altogether impossible without it.
Progress, of the best kind, is comparatively slow
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.
The best-regulated home is always that in which the discipline is the most perfect, and yet where it is the least felt. Moral discipline acts with the force of a law of nature.
Good actions give strength to ourselves and inspire good actions in others.
Simple honesty of purpose in a man goes a long way in life, if founded on a just estimate of himself and a steady obedience to the rule he knows and feels to be right.
Idleness of the mind is much worse than that of the body: wit, without employment, is a disease - the rust of the soul, a plague, a hell itself.
A place for everything, and everything in its place.