Skip to content

To uproot an old habit is sometimes a more painful thing, and vastly more difficult, than to wrench out a tooth.

— Samuel Smiles

Another quote →

More quotes by 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.

Self-Help; with Illustrations of Character and Conduct (1859)

A place for everything, and everything in its place.

Thrift (1875)

"Heaven helps those who help themselves" is a well-tried maxim, embodying in a small compass the results of vast human experience.

Self-Help; with Illustrations of Character and Conduct (1859)

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 and the Victorian Work Ethic (1987)

Conscience is that peculiar faculty of the soul which may be called the religious instinct.

All Samuel Smiles quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Samuel Smiles (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.