Top 120 Samuel Smiles Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “Character is itself a fortune.”

— Samuel Smiles

102. “Character is undergoing constant change, for better or for worse – either being elevated on the one hand, or degraded on the other.”

— Samuel Smiles

103. “The principal industrial excellence of the English people lay in their capacity of present exertion for a distant object.”

— Samuel Smiles

104. “Although genius always commands admiration, character most secures respect. The former is more the product of brain-power, the latter of heart-power; and in the long run it is the heart that rules in life. Men of genius stand to society in the relation of its intellect, as men of character of its conscience; and while the former are admired, the latter are followed.”

— Samuel Smiles

105. “The possession of a library, or the free use of it, no more constitutes learning, than the possession of wealth constitutes generosity.”

— Samuel Smiles

106. “Those who aren’t making mistakes probably aren’t making anything.”

— Samuel Smiles

107. “Necessity, oftener than facility, has been the mother of invention; and the most prolific school of all has been the school of difficulty.”

— Samuel Smiles

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

— Samuel Smiles

109. “The great and good do no die even in this world. Embalmed in books, their spirits walk abroad. The book is a living voice. It is an intellect to which one still listens.”

— Samuel Smiles

110. “There are many counterfeits of character, but the genuine article is difficult to be mistaken.”

— Samuel Smiles

111. “Stothard learned the art of combining colors by closely studying butterflies wings; he would often say that no one knew what he owed to these tiny insects. A burnt stick and a barn door served Wilkie in lieu of pencil and canvas.”

— Samuel Smiles

112. “Manners are the ornament of action.”

— Samuel Smiles

113. “Woman, above all other educators, educates humanly. Man is the brain, but woman is the heart, of humanity.”

— Samuel Smiles

114. “Even happiness itself may become habitual. There is a habit of looking at the bright side of things, and also of looking at the dark side.”

— Samuel Smiles

115. “He who labours not, cannot enjoy the reward of labour.”

— Samuel Smiles

116. “Any number of depraved units cannot form a great nation.”

— Samuel Smiles

117. “Work is one of the best educators of practical character.”

— Samuel Smiles

118. “Like men, nations are purified and strengthened by trials.”

— Samuel Smiles

119. “Men cannot be raised in masses as the mountains were in he early geological states of the world. They must be dealt with as units; for it is only by the elevation of individuals that the elevation of the masses can be effectively secured.”

— Samuel Smiles

120. “The influence of woman is the same everywhere. Her condition influences the morals, manners, and character of the people of all countries. Where she is debased, society is debased; where she is morally pure and enlightened, society will be proportionately elevated.”

— Samuel Smiles

121. “Purposes, like eggs, unless they be hatched into action, will run into rottenness.”

— Samuel Smiles

122. “All that is great in man comes through work; and civilization is its product.”

— Samuel Smiles

123. “Great men stamp their mind upon their age and nation.”

— Samuel Smiles

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

— Samuel Smiles

125. “A man may be accomplished in art, literature, and science, and yet, in honesty, virtue, truthfulness, and the spirit of duty, be entitled to take rank after many a poor and illiterate peasant.”

— Samuel Smiles

126. “Indeed, we can always better understand and appreciate a man’s real character by the manner in which he conducts himself towards those who are the most nearly related to him, and by his transaction of the seemingly commonplace details of daily duty, than by his public exhibition of himself as an author, an orator, or a statesman.”

— Samuel Smiles

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

— Samuel Smiles

128. “There are many persons of whom it may be said that they have no other possession in the world but their character, and yet they stand as firmly upon it as any crowned king.”

— Samuel Smiles

129. “Man cannot aspire if he looked down; if he rise, he must look up.”

— Samuel Smiles

130. “If character be irrecoverably lost, then indeed there will be nothing left worth saving.”

— Samuel Smiles

131. “Energy enables a man to force his way through irksome drudgery and dry details and caries him onward and upward to every station in life.”

— Samuel Smiles

132. “Honorable industry always travels the same road with enjoyment and duty, and progress is altogether impossible without it.”

— Samuel Smiles

133. “Labor is still, and ever will be, the inevitable price set upon everything which is valuable.”

— Samuel Smiles

134. “The reason why so little is done, is generally because so little is attempted.”

— Samuel Smiles

135. “The tiniest bits of opinion sown in the minds of children in private life afterwards issue forth to the world, and become its public opinion; for nations are gathered out of nurseries.”

— Samuel Smiles

136. “The most influential of all the virtues are those which are the most in request for daily use. They wear the best, and last the longest.”

— Samuel Smiles

137. “The ignorant man passes through the world dead to all pleasures, save those of the senses.”

— Samuel Smiles