Samuel Smiles Quotes

The best school of discipline is home. Family life is God’s own method of training the young, and homes are very much as women make them.

Energy enables a man to force his way through irksome drudgery and dry details and caries him onward and upward to every station in life.

Mere political reform will not cure the manifold evils which now afflict society. There requires a social reform, a domestic reform, an individual reform.

It is a mistake to suppose that men succeed through success; they much oftener succeed through failures. Precept, study, advice, and example could never have taught them so well as failure has done.

Although genius always commands admiration, character most secures respect. The former is more the product of the brain, the latter of heart-power; and in the long run it is the heart that rules in life.

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.

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.

Enthusiasm..the sustaining power of all great action

The tiniest bits of opinion sown in the minds of children in private life afterwards issue forth to the world, and become its public opinion; for nations are gathered out of nurseries.

Hope is like the sun, which, as we journey towards it, casts the shadow of our burden behind us. …Hope sweetens the memory of experiences well loved. It tempers our troubles to our growth and our strength. It befriends us in the dark hours, excites us in bright ones. It lends promise to the future and purpose to the past. It turns discouragement to determination. Samuel Smiles

The brave man is an inspiration to the weak, and compels them, as it were, to follow him.

This extraordinary metal, the soul of every manufacture, and the mainspring perhaps of civilised society. Of iron.