Samuel Smiles Quotes

"Enthusiasm...the sustaining power of all great action."

"''Where there is a will there is a way.'' is an old true saying. He who resolves upon doing a thing, by that very resolution often scales the barriers to it, and secures its achievement. To think we are able, is almost to be so -- to determine upon attainment is frequently attainment itself."

"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."

"The duty of helping one's self in the highest sense involves the helping of one's neighbors."

"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."

"An intense anticipation itself transforms possibility into reality; our desires being often but precursors of the things which we are capable of performing."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"It is not ease but effort, not facility but difficult, that makes man. There is perhaps no station in life in which difficulties do not have to be encountered and overcome before any decided means of success can be achieved."

"The wise man... if he would live at peace with others, he will bear and forbear."