Samuel Smiles：Thrift, Excerpt 62

Samuel Johnson fully knew the straits of poverty. He once signed his name _Impransus_, or _Dinnerless_. He had walked the streets with Savage, not knowing where to lay his head at night. Johnson never forgot the poverty through which he passed in his early life, and he was always counselling his friends and readers to avoid it. Like Cicero, he averred that the best source of wealth or well-being was economy. He called it the daughter of Prudence, the sister of Temperance, and the mother of Liberty. his mind, his character. Self-respect, originating in self-love, instigates the first step of improvement. It stimulates a man to rise, to look upward, to develop his intelligence, to improve his condition. Self-respect is the root of most of the virtues--of cleanliness, chastity, reverence, honesty, sobriety. To think meanly of one's self is to sink; sometimes to descend a precipice at the bottom of which is infamy.

Source： https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14418
Locator：Excerpt 62 · Verified：2026-10-19 · Verification：Short excerpt

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