Browse 10 quotations connecting Samuel Smiles with Integrity, with meanings, source notes and related themes.
Each quotation is included because its central idea connects with this theme, not simply because one matching word appears in the sentence.
Sources represented here include Character, Self-Help, Thrift. Keeping the work and source note beside each quotation makes differences in setting, speaker and emphasis easier to see.
Sources represented here include Character, Self-Help, Thrift.
“Character is property.”
A good name and dependable conduct are described as forms of value that belong to a person even when material circumstances change.
Source note: Character, Chapter I, “Influence of Character,” Project Gutenberg #2541. The brief statement introduces Smiles’s comparison of character with property: an enduring possession expressed through goodwill, esteem and an honourably earned reputation.
“Character is one of the greatest motive powers in the world.”
Character is treated as an active force because reliable conduct shapes trust, influence, and the quality of choices made under ordinary pressure.
Source note: Character, Chapter I, “Influence of Character,” Project Gutenberg #2541. Smiles opens the chapter by presenting character as a major moral and social force, then distinguishes its influence from intellectual talent, wealth and position.
“Truthfulness is at the foundation of all personal excellence.”
Personal excellence is grounded in truthfulness because habits of distortion eventually weaken trust, judgment, and the consistency between principle and action.
Source note: Character, Chapter I, “Influence of Character,” Project Gutenberg #2541. Smiles places the sentence in his discussion of veracity and reliableness, arguing that talent or genius cannot command durable confidence unless conduct can be trusted.
“Although genius always commands admiration, character most secures respect.”
Talent may attract attention, but durable respect depends more heavily on conduct, reliability, and the moral quality people experience over time.
Source note: Character, Chapter I, “Influence of Character,” Project Gutenberg #2541. Near the opening, Smiles contrasts admiration for genius with the more durable respect secured by character, framing the latter as a power of conduct rather than intellect alone.
“Thus reliableness becomes a passport to the general esteem and confidence of mankind.”
Smiles connects trust with repeated dependability rather than image: people become credible when others learn that their words, knowledge claims and commitments can be relied on in practice.
Source note: Character, Chapter I, “Influence of Character,” Project Gutenberg #2541. The sentence closes Smiles’s paragraph on truthfulness as veracity, rectitude and practical reliableness, explaining why dependable words and actions earn general confidence.
“The most influential of all the virtues are those which are the most in request for daily use.”
Virtues become socially important when they guide routine dealings with other people rather than appearing only in exceptional or ceremonial situations.
Source note: Character, Chapter I, “Influence of Character,” Project Gutenberg #2541. In the chapter’s discussion of duty in ordinary life, Smiles argues that the virtues most needed in everyday conduct exert the widest and most lasting influence.
“For character is itself a fortune.”
Material success is secondary to a reputation and inner standard that can survive temporary loss; character is treated as durable capital.
Source note: Self-Help, Chapter IX, “Men of Business,” Project Gutenberg #935. The line appears in the chapter’s discussion of honesty in business: Smiles argues that even temporary material loss is preferable to sacrificing character, which he describes as a fortune in itself.
“Character is human nature in its best form.”
Character is presented as developed human nature: moral order embodied in repeated conduct rather than merely admired in theory.
Source note: Self-Help, Chapter XIII, “Character—The True Gentleman,” Project Gutenberg #935. Near the opening of the chapter, Smiles defines character as moral order embodied in the individual and describes people of character as the conscience and motive power of society.
“Labour of all kinds is dignifying and honourable”
Smiles attaches dignity and honour to labour itself, making useful work part of his account of character and social self-respect.
Source note: Thrift, Chapter IV, “Means of Saving,” Project Gutenberg #14418. Smiles is arguing that working people should reject the idea that labour is degrading and use leisure for cultivation; the surrounding passage contains period class judgments that are not adopted as present-day social evidence.
“requires earnest purpose, honest self-devotion, and hard work.”
Smiles argues that social reform requires committed people and sustained effort rather than money alone, joining honesty, purpose and work in one historical reform ethic.
Source note: Thrift, Chapter XIV, “Riches and Charity,” Project Gutenberg #14418. Smiles argues that money alone cannot reform conduct and says change from intemperance, improvidence and irreligion requires earnest purpose, self-devotion and hard work; that nineteenth-century reform context is preserved.