Samuel Smiles：Self-Help, Excerpt 229

Contact with the good never fails to impart good, and we carry away with us some of the blessing, as travellers’ garments retain the odour of the flowers and shrubs through which they have passed. Those who knew the late John Sterling intimately, have spoken of the beneficial influence which he exercised on all with whom he came into personal contact. Many owed to him their first awakening to a higher being; from him they learnt what they were, and what they ought to be. Mr. Trench says of him:—“It was impossible to come in contact with his noble nature without feeling one’s self in some measure _ennobled_ and _lifted up_, as I ever felt when I left him, into a higher region of objects and aims than that in which one is tempted habitually to dwell.” It is thus that the noble character always acts; we become insensibly elevated by him, and cannot help feeling as he does and acquiring the habit of looking at things in the same light. Such is the magical action and reaction of minds upon each other.

Source： https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/935
Locator：Excerpt 229 · Verified：2026-10-19 · Verification：Short excerpt

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