Samuel Smiles：Self-Help, Excerpt 227

It is not enough to tell others what they are to do, but to exhibit the actual example of doing. What Mrs. Chisholm described to Mrs. Stowe as the secret of her success, applies to all life. “I found,” she said, “that if we want anything _done_, we must go to work and _do_: it is of no use merely to talk—none whatever.” It is poor eloquence that only shows how a person can talk. Had Mrs. Chisholm rested satisfied with lecturing, her project, she was persuaded, would never have got beyond the region of talk; but when people saw what she was doing and had actually accomplished, they fell in with her views and came forward to help her. Hence the most beneficent worker is not he who says the most eloquent things, or even who thinks the most loftily, but he who does the most eloquent acts.

Source： https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/935
Locator：Excerpt 227 · Verified：2026-10-19 · Verification：Short excerpt

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