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With many people, religion is merely a matter of words. So far as words go we do what we think right. But the words rarely lead to action, thought, and conduct, or to purity, goodness, and honesty. There is too much playing at religion, and too little of enthusiastic, hard work.

— Samuel Smiles

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Religion

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.

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All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.

Albert Einstein Moral Decay (1937)

Science and religion are two human enterprises sharing many features.

Freeman Dyson Infinite in All Directions (1988)

The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.

John Adams A Defence of the Constitutions of Government (1787)

The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.

Thomas Babington Macaulay History of England (1849)

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.