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“The foundation of success in life is good health.”
Achievement is treated as dependent on the physical capacity to work, think, and sustain effort rather than as a purely financial or professional matter.
Source note: The Art of Money Getting; Barnum places health before the business maxims that follow.
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“work is only done well when it is done with a will”
Ruskin links quality with willing engagement: merely being compelled to perform a task is not, in his argument, enough to produce work done with judgment and commitment.
Source note: The Crown of Wild Olive, lecture on Work; Project Gutenberg #26716. The sentence occurs in a discussion of how hard work should be organized and chosen; its period labor assumptions remain contextualized.
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“Generally then if you would make anything a habit, do it.”
Repeated behavior trains the corresponding habit, so change depends on practicing the desired action rather than merely endorsing it in theory.
Source note: Discourses, George Long translation; Epictetus explains that faculties and habits are strengthened by corresponding actions.
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“The governing of our temper is truly the business of our whole lives.”
Emotional self-command is not a childhood lesson completed once; it remains a lifelong practice because new circumstances continually test established habits.
Source note: Thoughts on the Education of Daughters, section on the temper; Wollstonecraft treats regulation of temper as continuous work.
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“Not a day passes without its discipline, whether for good or for evil.”
Daily experience is always training something, so ordinary choices can reinforce either constructive habits or patterns that make later self-command harder.
Source note: Character, Chapter I, “Influence of Character,” Project Gutenberg #2541. Smiles introduces the sentence while explaining that character is formed by many minute circumstances under partial individual control, so each day contributes discipline for good or ill.
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“And let your self-respect forbid you to do imperfectly anything that you do at all.”
Self-respect becomes a standard for workmanship: valuing oneself should appear not only in feeling but in the care brought to responsibilities and chosen work.
Source note: Woman in the Nineteenth Century and Kindred Papers; the sentence appears in advice about practical education, precision, and the development of the whole person.