Samuel Smiles：Thrift, Excerpt 207

Let a man resolve and determine that he will advance, and the first step of advancement is already made. The first step is half the battle. In the very fact of advancing himself, he is in the most effectual possible way advancing others. He is giving them the most eloquent of all lessons--that of example; which teaches far more emphatically than words can teach. He is doing, what others are by imitation incited to do. Beginning with himself, he is in the most emphatic manner teaching the duty of self-reform and of self-improvement; and if the majority of men acted as he did, how much wiser, how much happier, how much more prosperous as a whole, would society become. For, society being made up of units, will be happy and prosperous, or the reverse, exactly in the same degree as the respective individuals who compose it.

Source： https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14418
Locator：Excerpt 207 · Verified：2026-10-19 · Verification：Short excerpt

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