Meaning of “In all the individual reforms or improvements that…”

Self-Help, Chapter I, “Self-Help—National and Individual,” Project Gutenberg #935. This is the opening chapter’s statement of Smiles’s self-help argument, where individual initiative is presented as a source of personal growth and, in his period framework, national strength.

Moral printed after “Hercules and the Wagoner” in the Townsend translation; Hercules first tells the driver to help himself.

The Woman’s Bible, Stanton commentary; the line appears in her critique of idealizing women’s self-sacrifice and is preserved in the Project Gutenberg text.

Thrift, Chapter II, “Habits of Thrift,” Project Gutenberg #14418. In a discussion of self-improvement and moral independence, Smiles presents self-respect as the impulse that makes a person rise, develop intelligence and improve condition.

The Analects of Confucius, James Legge’s public-domain English translation; Book XV contrasts inward self-examination with dependence on others.

Julius Caesar, Act I, Scene 2, in the 1919 Yale Shakespeare edition edited by Lawrence Mason. Cassius tells Brutus that men can be masters of their fates and immediately continues, ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, / But in ourselves, that we are underlings.’ This is Cassius’s political persuasion inside the drama, not neutral historical evidence or Shakespeare speaking directly.