Samuel Smiles – 15 Quotes

15 Quotes by Samuel Smiles

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

– Samuel Smiles

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

– Samuel Smiles

Knowledge conquered by labor becomes a possession – a property entirely our own.

– Samuel Smiles

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

– Samuel Smiles

The wise man… if he would live at peace with others, he will bear and forbear.

– Samuel Smiles

I’m as happy a man as any in the world, for the whole world seems to smile upon me!

– Samuel Smiles

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

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

– Samuel Smiles