Samuel Smiles Quotes

Everyone knows that weeds eat out the life of the garden and of the productive fields. It's like that in the building and developing of character. No one knows our own faults and tendencies better than we do ourselves, so that it is up to each one of us to keep the weeds out, and to keep all growth vigorous and fruitful.

For every one step that you take in the pursuit of higher knowledge, take three steps in the perfection of your own character

Week-by-week you grow with your character and it's an interesting challenge.

If you will think about what you ought to do for other people, your character will take care of itself. Character is a by-product, and any man who devotes himself to its cultivation in his own case will become a selfish prig.

I pray and try every day to be a better actor.

If you want to be the best salesperson, first you must be the best person.

People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built.

Not only am I constantly seeking better performance but also to be a better person, to be respected.

I prefer stories about people who are, in a sense, trying to find better versions of themselves.

It does us no harm to look over our past shortcomings and plan to improve our characters and actions in the coming year

An arrogant person considers himself perfect. This is the chief harm of arrogance. It interferes with a person's main task in life - becoming a better person.

Practice self-awareness, self-evaluation, and self-improvement. If we are aware that our manners - language, behavior, and actions - are measured against our values and principles, we are able to more easily embody the philosophy, leadership is a matter of how to be, not how to do.

I make mistakes, but each and every day you want to try to better yourself to be a better person and learn from your mistakes.

I think I tried to improve as a person, as a brother, as a son, as a friend every day.

All your scholarship, all your study of Shakespeare and Wordsworth would be in vain, if at the same time you do not build your character, and attain mastery over your thoughts and actions.

Every man has at times in his mind the Ideal of what he should be, but is not. This ideal may be high and complete, or it may be quite low and insufficient; yet in all men, that really seek to improve, it is better than the actual character... Man never falls so low, that he can see nothing higher than himself.

It is difficult for a fool's habits to change to selflessness.

Good character improves every aspect of a person’s life.

You cannot build up a character in a solitude; you need a formed character to stand a solitude.

I'm always fascinated with how a person becomes a good quality person, a productive person, and how it happened to me, because I was a terror.

As a character, it's very interesting to play someone who wants to change their life and have him change it.

Don't depend on death to liberate you from your imperfections. You are exactly the same after death as you were before. Nothing changes; you only give up the body. If you are a thief or a liar or a cheater before death, you don't become an angel merely by dying. If such were possible, then let us all go and jump in the ocean now and become angels at once! Whatever you have made of yourself thus far, so will you be hereafter. And when you reincarnate, you will bring that same nature with you. To change, you have to make the effort. This world is the place to do it.

Do what you know and perception is converted into character.

Your character is the harvest of your habits.

The struggle for your own character is the struggle for the nation's character.