Samuel Smiles Quotes

Moral character has now some influence in our elections, but not that place which it deserves. The law of public opinion excludes confirmed sots, and persons judicially convicted of high crimes and misdemeanors against the State; but it ought to render the election of all profane swearers, notorious Sabbath breakers, seducers, slanderers, prodigals and riotous persons, as well as the advocates of dueling, impracticable.

Few women and fewer men have enough character to be idle.

Being forced to work, and forced to do your best, will breed in you temperance and self-control, diligence and strength of will, cheerfulness and content, and a hundred virtues which the idle will never know.

It's about working when nobody's watching.

I have a rigid self-accountability. You have to work hard.

Laws control the lesser man. Right conduct controls the greater one.

So long as idleness is quite shut out from our lives, all the sins of wantonness, softness, and effeminacy are prevented; and there is but little room for temptation.

Cultivate these, then, for they are wholly within your power: sincerity and dignity; industriousness; and sobriety. Avoid grumbling, be frugal, considerate, and frank; be temperate in manner and speech; carry yourself with authority.

The discipline of desire is the background of character.

The writer has to force himself to work. He has to make his own hours and if he doesn't go to his desk at all there is nobody to scold him.

So I cut out all the drinkin' and hangin' out and stuff like that early on.

You're always concerned for your character. You should be.

We distinguish the excellent man from the common man by saying that the former is the one who makes great demands on himself, and the latter who makes no demands on himself.

Idleness is a constant sin, and labor is a duty. Idleness is the devil's home for temptation and for unprofitable, distracting musings; while labor profit others and ourselves.

I can't convince you to put the drink down if you're an alcoholic, you have to want to do that. I can't convince you to stop eating the cookies when you're a diabetic. You have to do that. And that takes responsibility.

We can endure neither our vices nor the remedies for them.

I like challenging myself. I'm not a person who likes not to work.

If I had not some strength of will I would make a first class drunkard.

Work alone is noble.

If I start going back to church, I'd have to stop the smoking and drinking, and I wouldn't be able to curse any more.

Temperance is moderation in the things that are good and total abstinence from the things that are foul.

Reform must come from within and not from without. You cannot legislate for virtue.

All intellectual superiority is the fruit of active effort.

The more my people work, the less vices they will have

Little by little it dawned upon me that this law was not making people drink any less, but it was making hypocrites and law breakers of a great number of people. It seemed to me best to go back to the old situation in which, if a man or woman drank to excess, they were injuring themselves and their immediate family and friends and the act was a violation against their own sense of morality and no violation against the law of the land.