Samuel Smiles Quotes (13 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

Samuel Smiles: 13 quotes3 likes

Famous Samuel Smiles Quotes

“Good actions give strength to ourselves, and inspire good actions in others.”

Duty: With Illustrations of Courage, Patience, and Endurance (1880), Ch. 2, p. 49

“Sow a thought, and you reap an act;
Sow an act, and you reap a habit;
Sow a habit, and you reap a character;
Sow a character, and you reap a destiny.”

Samuel Smiles

Saying published anonymously in The Dayspring, Vol. 10 (1881) by the Unitarian Sunday-School Society, and quoted in Life and Labor (1887) by Smiles; this is most often attributed to George Dana Boardman, at least as early as 1884, but also sometimes attributed to William Makepeace Thackeray as early as 1891, probably because in in Life and Labor Smiles adds a quote by Thackeray right after this one, to Charles Reade in 1903, and to William James as early as 1906, because it appears in his Principles of Psychology (1890).
Misattributed
Source: Happy Homes and the Hearts That Make Them

“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.”

Samuel Smiles

Source: Self-Help; with Illustrations of Character and Conduct (1859), Ch. I : Self-Help — National and Individual

“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.”

Samuel Smiles

Lives of the Engineers (1862).

“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.”

Samuel Smiles

Source: Self-Help; with Illustrations of Character and Conduct (1859), Ch. XI : Self-Culture — Facilities and Difficulties.
Source: The Lives Of George And Robert Stephenson
Context: 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.

“A place for everything, and everything in its place.”

Samuel Smiles

Thrift (1875).

Samuel Smiles Quotes

“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.”

Samuel Smiles

Source: Self-Help; with Illustrations of Character and Conduct (1859), Ch. XIII : Character — The True Gentleman
Context: 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.

“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.”

Samuel Smiles

Source: Self-Help; with Illustrations of Character and Conduct (1859), Ch. X : Money — Its Use and Abuse

“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.”

Samuel Smiles

Source: Self-Help; with Illustrations of Character and Conduct (1859), Ch. XIII : Character — The True Gentleman

“No laws, however stringent, can make the idle industrious, the thriftless provident, or the drunken sober.”

Samuel Smiles

Source: Self-Help; with Illustrations of Character and Conduct (1859), Ch. I : Self-Help — National and Individual

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

Samuel Smiles

As quoted in Samuel Smiles and the Victorian Work Ethic (1987) by Timothy Travers, p. 162.

“"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.”

Samuel Smiles

Source: Self-Help; with Illustrations of Character and Conduct (1859), Ch. I : Self-Help — National and Individual; earlier variant of the proverb quoted: God helps them who help themselves; recorded in Jacula Prudentum (1651) by George Herbert

“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.”

Samuel Smiles

Source: Self-Help; with Illustrations of Character and Conduct (1859), Ch. XI : Self-Culture — Facilities and Difficulties