Samuel Smiles

Lost wealth may be replaced by industry, lost knowledge by study, lost health by temperance or medicine, but lost time is gone forever.

Hope is like the sun, which, as we journey toward it, casts the shadow of our burden behind us.

The career of a great man remains an enduring monument of human energy. The man dies and disappears, but his thoughts and acts survive and leave an indelible stamp upon his race.

Wisdom and understanding can only become the possession of individual men by travelling the old road of observation, attention, perseverance, and industry.

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

If we opened our minds to enjoyment, we might find tranquil pleasures spread about us on every side. We might live with the angels that visit us on every sunbeam, and sit with the fairies who wait on every flower.

The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual.

The work of many of the greatest men, inspired by duty, has been done amidst suffering and trial and difficulty. They have struggled against the tide, and reached the shore exhausted.

Admiration of great men, living or dead, naturally evokes imitation of them in a greater or less degree.

For want of self-restraint many men are engaged all their lives in fighting with difficulties of their own making.

It is not ease, but effort-not facility, but difficulty, makes men. There is, perhaps, no station in life in which difficulties have not to be encountered and overcome before any decided measure of success can be achieved.

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

Those who aren't making mistakes probably aren't making anything.

Character is property. It is the noblest of possessions.

Labour may be a burden and a chastisement, but it is also an honour and a glory. Without it, nothing can be accomplished.

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.

The experience gathered from books, though often valuable, is but the nature of learning; whereas the experience gained from actual life is one of the nature of wisdom.

Men who are resolved to find a way for themselves will always find opportunities enough; and if they do not find them, they will make them.

Hope... is the companion of power, and the mother of success; for who so hopes has within him the gift of miracles.

The apprenticeship of difficulty is one which the greatest of men have had to serve.

It is possible that the scrupulously honest man may not grow rich so fast as the unscrupulous and dishonest one; but the success will be of a truer kind, earned without fraud or injustice. And even though a man should for a time be unsuccessful, still he must be honest: better lose all and save character. For character is itself a fortune. . . .