3 quotations linked to The Life of George Stephenson and of his Son Robert Stephenson by or associated with Samuel Smiles, with source notes, explanations and related topics.
Perseverance, engineering difficulty, learning, innovation, decision, resilience and the development of early railways.
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“His motto was 'Persevere!'”
Smiles condenses Stephenson’s response to repeated engineering and institutional obstacles into a single governing principle of continued effort.
Source note: 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.
Source note: 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.
Source note: 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.