Samuel Smiles
37 quotes
Biography
"Hope is like the sun, which, as we journey toward it, casts the shadow of our burden behind us."
"The battle of life is, in most cases, fought uphill; and to win it without a struggle were perhaps to win it without honor. If there were no difficulties there would be no success; if there were nothing to struggle for, there would be nothing to be achieved."
"Hope is the companion of power, and mother of success; for who so hopes strongly has within him the gift of miracles."
"England was nothing, compared to continental nations until she had become commercial…until about the middle of the last century, when a number of ingenious and inventive men, without apparent relation to each other, arose in various parts of the kingdom, succeeded in giving an immense impulse to all the branches of the national industry; the result of which has been a harvest of wealth and prosperity, perhaps without a parallel in the history of the world."
"A place for everything, and everything in its place."
"Mere political reform will not cure the manifold evils which now afflict society. There requires a social reform, a domestic reform, an individual reform."
""Heaven helps those who help themselves" is a well-tried maxim, embodying in a small compass the results of vast human experience. The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual; and, exhibited in the lives of many, it constitutes the true source of national vigour and strength. Help from without is often enfeebling in its effects, but help from within invariably invigorates. Whatever is done for men or classes, to a certain extent takes away the stimulus and necessity of doing for themselves; and where men are subjected to over-guidance and over-government, the inevitable tendency is to render them comparatively helpless."
"The greatest slave is not he who is ruled by a despot, great though that evil be, but he who is in the thrall of his own moral ignorance, selfishness, and vice."
"Nothing is more common than energy in money-making, quite independent of any higher object than its accumulation. A man who devotes himself to this pursuit, body and soul, can scarcely fail to become rich. Very little brains will do; spend less than you earn; add guinea to guinea; scrape and save; and the pile of gold will gradually rise."
"The crown and glory of life is Character. It is the noblest possession of a man, constituting a rank in itself, and an estate in the general goodwill; dignifying every station, and exalting every position in society. It exercises a greater power than wealth, and secures all the honour without the jealousies of fame. It carries with it an influence which always tells; for it is the result of proved honour, rectitude, and consistency — qualities which, perhaps more than any other, command the general confidence and respect of mankind."
"Even happiness itself may become habitual. There is a habit of looking at the bright side of things, and also of looking at the dark side. Dr. Johnson has said that the habit of looking at the best side of a thing is worth more to a man than a thousand pounds a year. And we possess the power, to a great extent, of so exercising the will as to direct the thoughts upon objects calculated to yield happiness and improvement rather than their opposites."
"Self-Help is one of the most delightful and invigorating books it has been my happy fortune to meet with. It has done me nothing but good, nor can I conceive how it should do harm to any. … The object of the book briefly is, to reinculcate these old-fashioned but wholesome lessons — which perhaps cannot be too often urged — that youth must work in order to enjoy; that nothing creditable can be accomplished without application and diligence; that the student must not be daunted by difficulties, but conquer them by patience and perseverance ; and that, after all, he must seek elevation of character, without which capacity is worthless and worldly success is naught."
"Utilitarianism had found [in Smiles’ Self-Help] its portrait gallery of heroes, inscribed with a vigorous exhortation to all men to strive in their image; this philistine romanticism established the bourgeois hero-prototype—the penniless office-boy who works his way to economic fortune and this wins his way into the mercantile plutocracy."
"Every now and then they were awarded prizes — Self-Help by Smiles, and other books suitable for perusal by persons suffering from almost complete obliteration of the mental faculties."
"It's a brutal book; it ought to be burnt by the common hangman. Smiles was the arch-Philistine, and his book the apotheosis of respectability, gigmanity, and selfish grab."
"Progress however, 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."
"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."
"The very greatest things - great thoughts, discoveries, inventions - have usually been nurtured in hardship, often pondered over in sorrow, and at length established with difficulty."
"Lost wealth may be replaced by industry, lost knowledge by study, lost health by temperance or medicine, but lost time is gone forever."
"Hope... is the companion of power, and the mother of success for who so hopes has within him the gift of miracles."
"Lost wealth may be replaced by industry, lost knowledge by study, lost health by temperance or medicine, but lost time is gone forever."
"Knowledge conquered by labor becomes a possession - a property entirely our own."
"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."
"The wise man... if he would live at peace with others, he will bear and forbear."
"Hope... is the companion of power, and the mother of success for who so hopes has within him the gift of miracles."