Browse 10 quotations connecting Samuel Smiles with Perseverance, with meanings, source notes and related themes.
Sources represented here include Self-Help, The Life of George Stephenson and of his Son Robert Stephenson, Men of Invention and Industry.
“It is always the Man society wants.”
In context, Smiles argues that social and industrial progress still depends on capable people willing to lead, follow and work persistently.
Men of Invention and Industry, Chapter X, “Industry in Ireland: Through Connaught and Ulster to Belfast”; Project Gutenberg #725. Period capitalization and gendered wording are preserved as source text.
“His efforts were long, laborious, and sometimes apparently hopeless.”
Smiles emphasizes the duration and difficulty of John Harrison’s work before success, making perseverance visible as sustained labor rather than instant inspiration.
Men of Invention and Industry, Chapter III, “John Harrison: Inventor of the Marine Chronometer”; Project Gutenberg #725. This is Smiles’s biographical narration, not Harrison speaking in first person.
“We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success.”
Failure can expose what does not work and force closer observation, turning setbacks into information that uncomplicated success may never reveal.
Self-Help, Chapter XI, “Self-Culture—Facilities and Difficulties,” Project Gutenberg #935. The passage follows Charles James Fox’s contrast between early success and perseverance after failure, then leads into examples of discoveries and learning produced through mistakes and failed attempts.
“Progress, however, of the best kind, is comparatively slow.”
Smiles treats durable progress as incremental rather than instantaneous, arguing that worthwhile results are built through repeated effort and patience instead of expecting one dramatic breakthrough.
Self-Help, Chapter IV, “Application and Perseverance,” Project Gutenberg #935. The sentence opens a paragraph that continues, “Great results cannot be achieved at once,” and compares advancement in life to walking step by step.
“The battle of life is, in most cases, fought up-hill; and to win it without a struggle were perhaps to win it without honour.”
Difficulty is not treated as evidence that effort is pointless; resistance can be part of the process by which achievement acquires substance.
Self-Help, Chapter XI, “Self-Culture—Facilities and Difficulties,” Project Gutenberg #935. The passage comes immediately after Hodson’s reflection on resolutely doing difficult duties and continues by presenting difficulty as a stimulus to people of resolution and valour.
“His motto was 'Persevere!'”
Smiles condenses Stephenson’s response to repeated engineering and institutional obstacles into a single governing principle of continued effort.
The Life of George Stephenson and of his Son Robert Stephenson, Chapter XI, “Chat Moss—Construction of the Railway”; represented 1868 revised edition, Project Gutenberg #46229. The motto appears in Smiles’s surrounding narration immediately after the quoted Chat Moss recollection.
“There was no help for it, however, but to go on.”
During the Chat Moss crisis, continuing became the practical choice after heavy investment and discouraging expert opinion had narrowed the alternatives.
The Life of George Stephenson and of his Son Robert Stephenson, Chapter XI, “Chat Moss—Construction of the Railway”; represented 1868 revised edition, Project Gutenberg #46229. Smiles records Stephenson’s first-person recollection of the directors’ crisis over Chat Moss in quoted speech.
“So much patient perseverance could not but eventually succeed”
Smiles describes Stephenson’s progress in arithmetic as the cumulative result of study and patient persistence rather than easy aptitude.
The Life of George Stephenson and of his Son Robert Stephenson, Chapter IV, “The Stephensons at Killingworth—Education and Self-Education of Father and Son”; represented 1868 revised edition, Project Gutenberg #46229. The excerpt is Smiles’s narration of Stephenson’s patient arithmetic study under John Wigham.
“Genius is but a capability of labouring intensely: it is the power of making great and sustained efforts.”
Genius is redefined as capacity for sustained effort, emphasizing endurance and application over an image of effortless inspiration.
Thrift, Chapter I, “Industry,” Project Gutenberg #14418. Immediately after linking greatness in art, literature and science with labour, Smiles rhetorically defines genius as a capacity for intense and sustained effort; it is not treated as a modern psychological finding.
“No great work has ever been done “at a heat.” It is the result of repeated efforts, and often of many failures.”
Repeated attempts and failure are treated as normal parts of producing substantial work, countering the idea that important creation happens fully formed in one effort.
Thrift, Chapter I, “Industry,” Project Gutenberg #14418. The sentence immediately follows the poetry example and presents substantial work as the product of repeated effort and failure; the absolute wording is Smiles’s rhetorical generalization.
