Samuel Smiles：Self-Help, Excerpt 42

Watt was one of the most industrious of men; and the story of his life proves, what all experience confirms, that it is not the man of the greatest natural vigour and capacity who achieves the highest results, but he who employs his powers with the greatest industry and the most carefully disciplined skill—the skill that comes by labour, application, and experience. Many men in his time knew far more than Watt, but none laboured so assiduously as he did to turn all that he did know to useful practical purposes. He was, above all things, most persevering in the pursuit of facts. He cultivated carefully that habit of active attention on which all the higher working qualities of the mind mainly depend. Indeed, Mr. Edgeworth entertained the opinion, that the difference of intellect in men depends more upon the early cultivation of this _habit of attention_, than upon any great disparity between the powers of one individual and another.

Source： https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/935
Locator：Excerpt 42 · Verified：2026-10-19 · Verification：Short excerpt

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