Samuel Smiles：Self-Help, Excerpt 109

It is the intelligent eye of the careful observer which gives these apparently trivial phenomena their value. So trifling a matter as the sight of seaweed floating past his ship, enabled Columbus to quell the mutiny which arose amongst his sailors at not discovering land, and to assure them that the eagerly sought New World was not far off. There is nothing so small that it should remain forgotten; and no fact, however trivial, but may prove useful in some way or other if carefully interpreted. Who could have imagined that the famous “chalk cliffs of Albion” had been built up by tiny insects—detected only by the help of the microscope—of the same order of creatures that have gemmed the sea with islands of coral! And who that contemplates such extraordinary results, arising from infinitely minute operations, will venture to question the power of little things?

Source： https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/935
Locator：Excerpt 109 · Verified：2026-10-19 · Verification：Short excerpt

公版作品；原文逐字取自 Project Gutenberg，仅摘录段落并附全书链接。

This text is in the public domain. The edition and source link are above. Copyright

← Back to the library