Samuel Smiles Quotes
Samuel Smiles (1812-1904) was a Scottish author known for his work in promoting self-help and individual responsibility.
These quotes reflect Smiles’ emphasis on self-reliance, hard work, and the belief in the power of personal effort to overcome challenges and achieve success.
His book “Self-Help” published in 1859, is often cited as the basis of the self-help genre and contains many of these principles. Some of his most famous quotes include:
Famous Samuel Smiles Quotes
“Heaven helps those who help themselves.”
“Life will always be to a large extent what we ourselves make it.”
“Sow a thought, and you reap an action; sow an act, and you reap a habit; sow a habit, and you reap a character; sow a character, and you reap a destiny.”
“The battle of life is, in most cases, fought uphill; and to win it without a struggle were perhaps to win it without honor.”
“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.”
“Hope is like the sun, which, as we journey toward it, casts the shadow of our burden behind us.”
“It is a mistake to suppose that men succeed through success; they much oftener succeed through failures.”
“The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual.”
“Patience is a necessary ingredient of genius.”
“Enthusiasm… the sustaining power of all great action.”
“Time is of no account with great thoughts, which are as fresh today as when they first passed through their author’s minds, ages ago.”
“The experience gathered from books, though often valuable, is but the nature of learning; whereas the experience gained from actual life is one of the nature of wisdom.”
“Labor overcomes everything.”
“Man cannot aspire if he looks down; if he rise, he must look up.”
“Character is property. It is the noblest of possessions.”
“Knowledge conquered by labor becomes a possession – a property entirely our own.”
“Fortune has often been blamed for her blindness; but fortune is not so blind as men are. Those who look into practical life will find that fortune is usually on the side of the industrious.”
“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.”
“An intense anticipation itself transforms possibility into reality; our desires being often but precursors of the things which we are capable of performing.”
“Hope… is the companion of power, and the mother of success; for who so hopes has within him the gift of miracles.”
“The duty of helping one’s self in the highest sense involves the helping of one’s neighbors.”
“A place for everything, and everything in its place.”
“He who never made a mistake, never made a discovery.”
“Wisdom and understanding can only become the possession of individual men by travelling the old road of observation, attention, perseverance, and industry.”
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