230 Quotes by Samuel Smiles

I'm as happy a man as any in the world, for the whole world seems to smile upon me!

National progress is the sum of individual industry, energy, and uprightness, as national decay is of individual idleness, selfishness, and vice.

Labor is still, and ever will be, the inevitable price set upon everything which is valuable.

There is no act, however trivial, but has its train of consequences.

Men must necessarily be the active agents of their own well-being and well-doing they themselves must in the very nature of things be their own best helpers.

Men often discover their affinity to each other by the mutual love they have for a book.

Admiration of great men, living or dead, naturally evokes imitation of them in a greater or less degree.

It is not eminent talent that is required to ensure success in any pursuit, so much as purpose-not merely the power to achieve, but the will to labour energetically and perseveringly. Hence energy of will may be defined to be the very central power of character in a man-in a word, it is the Man himself.

Knowledge conquered by labor becomes a possession -a property entirely our own.