Lost wealth may be replaced by industry, lost knowledge by study, lost health by temperance or medicine, but lost time is gone forever.
Samuel SmilesRead
The duty of helping one's self in the highest sense involves the helping of one's neighbors.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Helping oneself is inherently linked to helping others.
This quote suggests that true self-improvement is not a solitary endeavor but is connected to the well-being of others. When individuals focus on bettering themselves, they should also consider how their growth and actions can support and uplift their neighbors and community, indicating that personal success and collective responsibility are intertwined.
Themes
Self-HelpCommunitySupportNeighborsGrowthResponsibility
In practice
Example use cases
This quote is often shared during community service events to inspire volunteers.
More from Samuel Smiles
All quotes →Hope is like the sun, which, as we journey toward it, casts the shadow of our burden behind us.
Samuel SmilesRead
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.
Samuel SmilesRead
Wisdom and understanding can only become the possession of individual men by travelling the old road of observation, attention, perseverance, and industry.
Samuel SmilesRead
An intense anticipation itself transforms possibility into reality; our desires being often but precursors of the things which we are capable of performing.
Samuel SmilesRead
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.
Samuel SmilesRead
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In the post-individualistic era, science and spirituality will become allies, and human beings will realize a vast potentiality now only dimly felt.
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What does it mean to know and experience my own “nothingness?” It is not enough to turn away in disgust from my illusions and faults and mistakes, to separate myself from them as if they were not, and as if I were someone other than myself. This kind of self-annihilati on is only a worse illusion, it is a pretended humility which, by saying “I am nothing” I mean in effect “I wish I were not what I am.
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Through me you pass into the city of woe: Through me you pass into eternal pain: Through me among the people lost for aye. Justice the founder of my fabric moved: To rear me was the task of power divine, Supremest wisdom, and primeval love. Before me things create were none, save things Eternal, and eternal I shall endure. All hope abandon, ye who enter here.
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