A biography for Samuel Smileshasn’t been written yet.
“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.”
“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.”
“Life will always be to a large extent what we ourselves make it.”
“Labour may be a burden and a chastisement, but it is also an honour and a glory. Without it, nothing can be accomplished.”
“Admiration of great men, living or dead, naturally evokes imitation of them in a greater or less degree.”
“An intense anticipation itself transforms possibility into reality; our desires being often but precursors of the things which we are capable of performing.”
“It is energy - the central element of which is will - that produces the miracle that is enthusiasm in all ages. Everywhere it is what is called force of character and the sustaining power of all great action.”
“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.”
“Knowledge conquered by labor becomes a possession - a property entirely our own.”
“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.”
“Man cannot aspire if he looked down; if he rise, he must look up.”
“The duty of helping one's self in the highest sense involves the helping of one's neighbors.”
“The apprenticeship of difficulty is one which the greatest of men have had to serve.”
“Practical wisdom is only to be learned in the school of experience. Precepts and instruction are useful so far as they go, but, without the discipline of real life, they remain of the nature of theory only.”
“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.”
“Lost wealth may be replaced by industry, lost knowledge by study, lost health by temperance or medicine, but lost time is gone forever.”
“The shortest way to do many things is to do only one thing at once.”
“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.”
“Enthusiasm... the sustaining power of all great action.”
“Labor is still, and ever will be, the inevitable price set upon everything which is valuable.”