Samuel Smiles
Samuel Smiles
Samuel Smiles, was a Scottish author and government reformer who campaigned on a Chartist platform. But he concluded that more progress would come from new attitudes than from new laws. His masterpiece, Self-Help, promoted thrift and claimed that poverty was caused largely by irresponsible habits, while also attacking materialism and laissez-faire government. It has been called "the bible of mid-Victorian liberalism", and it raised Smiles to celebrity status almost overnight...
NationalityScottish
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth23 December 1812
''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.
Character is property. It is the noblest of possessions.
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.
Good actions give strength to ourselves and inspire good actions in others.
Hope is the companion of power, and mother of success; for who so hopes strongly has within him the gift of miracles.
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.
A place for everything, and everything in its place.
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.
It is idleness that is the curse of man - not labour. Idleness eats the heart out of men as of nations, and consumes them as rust does iron.
I'm as happy a man as any in the world, for the whole world seems to smile upon me!
Admiration of great men, living or dead, naturally evokes imitation of them in a greater or less degree.
Hope is like the sun, which, as we journey toward it, casts the shadow of our burden behind us.
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.