Top 120 Samuel Smiles Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “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

2. “The shortest way to do many things is to do one at a time.”

— Samuel Smiles

3. “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

4. “Self-control is only courage under another form.”

— Samuel Smiles

Featured in: Self Control Quotes

5. “Cheerfulness is also an excellent wearing quality. It has been called the bright weather of the heart.”

— Samuel Smiles

6. “Politeness goes far, yet costs nothing.”

— Samuel Smiles

7. “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. But all play and no work makes him something worse.”

— Samuel Smiles

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

— Samuel Smiles

9. “With will one can do anything.”

— Samuel Smiles

10. “It is the close observation of little things which is the secret of success in business, in art, in science, and in every pursuit of life.”

— Samuel Smiles

11. “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.”

— Samuel Smiles

12. “He who never made a mistake, never made a discovery.”

— Samuel Smiles

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

— Samuel Smiles

14. “The battle of life is, in most cases, fought uphill; and to win it without a struggle were perhaps to win it without honor. If there were no difficulties there would be no success; if there were nothing to struggle for, there would be nothing to be achieved.”

— Samuel Smiles

15. “When typhus or cholera breaks out, they tell us that Nobody is to blame. That terrible Nobody! How much he has to answer for. More mischief is done by Nobody than by all the world besides.”

— Samuel Smiles

16. “Childhood is like a mirror, which reflects in after life the images first presented to it.”

— Samuel Smiles

17. “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.”

— Samuel Smiles

18. “Life will always be to a large extent what we ourselves make it.”

— Samuel Smiles

19. “Self-respect is the noblest garment with which a man can clothe himself, the most elevating feeling with which the mind can be inspired.”

— Samuel Smiles

20. “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.”

— Samuel Smiles

21. “The great leader attracts to himself men of kindred character, drawing them towards him as the loadstone draws iron.”

— Samuel Smiles

22. “Riches are oftener an impediment than a stimulus to action; and in many cases they are quite as much a misfortune as a blessing.”

— Samuel Smiles

23. “Progress however, 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.”

— Samuel Smiles

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

— Samuel Smiles

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

— Samuel Smiles

26. “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.”

— Samuel Smiles

27. “It is energy – the central element of which is will – that produces the miracle that is enthusiasm in all ages. Everywhere it is what is called force of character and the sustaining power of all great action.”

— Samuel Smiles

28. “Fortune has often been blamed for her blindness; but fortune is not so blind as men are. Those who look into practical life will find that fortune is usually on the side of the industrious, as the winds and waves are on the side of the best navigators.”

— Samuel Smiles

29. “Home is the first and most important school of character. It is there that every human being receives his best moral training, or his worst; for it is there that he imbibes those principles of conduct which endure through manhood, and cease only with life.”

— Samuel Smiles

30. “The duty of helping one’s self in the highest sense involves the helping of one’s neighbors.”

— Samuel Smiles

31. “Good character is property. It is the noblest of all possessions.”

— Samuel Smiles

32. “Example teaches better than precept. It is the best modeler of the character of men and women. To set a lofty example is the richest bequest a man can leave behind him.”

— Samuel Smiles

33. “Obedience, submission, discipline, courage – these are among the characteristics which make a man.”

— Samuel Smiles

34. “The best school of discipline is home. Family life is God’s own method of training the young, and homes are very much as women make them.”

— Samuel Smiles

35. “The women of the poorer classes make sacrifices, and run risks, and bear privations, and exercise patience and kindness to a degree that the world never knows of, and would scarcely believe even if it did know.”

— Samuel Smiles

36. “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

37. “It is a mistake to suppose that men succeed through success; they much oftener succeed through failures. Precept, study, advice, and example could never have taught them so well as failure has done.”

— Samuel Smiles

38. “A woman’s best qualities do not reside in her intellect, but in her affections. She gives refreshment by her sympathies, rather than by her knowledge.”

— Samuel Smiles

39. “Men whose acts are at variance with their words command no respect, and what they say has but little weight.”

— Samuel Smiles

40. “Good sense, disciplined by experience and inspired by goodness, issues in practical wisdom.”

— Samuel Smiles

41. “Truthfulness is at the foundation of all personal excellence.”

— Samuel Smiles

42. “Sympathy is the golden key that unlocks the hearts of others.”

— Samuel Smiles

43. “Time is of no account with great thoughts. They are as fresh today as when they first passed through their author’s minds, ages ago.”

— Samuel Smiles

44. “I see nothing quite conclusive in the art of temporal government, But violence, duplicity and frequent malversation. King rules or barons rule: The strong man strongly and the weak man by caprice. They have but one law, to seize the power and keep it.”

— Samuel Smiles

45. “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.”

— Samuel Smiles

46. “National progress is the sum of individual industry, energy, and uprightness, as national decay is of individual idleness, selfishness, and vice.”

— Samuel Smiles

47. “There is no act, however trivial, but has its train of consequences.”

— Samuel Smiles

48. “The government of a nation itself is usually found to be but the reflux of the individuals composing it. The government that is ahead of the people will be inevitably dragged down to their level, as the government that is behind them will in the long run be dragged up.”

— Samuel Smiles

49. “Childhood is like a mirror, which reflects in afterlife the images first presented to it. The first thing continues forever with the child. The first joy, the first sorrow, the first success, the first failure, the first achievement, the first misadventure, paint the foreground of his life.”

— Samuel Smiles

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

— Samuel Smiles