Samuel Smiles
Posts in The Copybook credited to ‘Samuel Smiles’
A sympathetic understanding of the trials of other people is essential for getting along.
In his motivational book Character (1871), Samuel Smiles reminded us that getting along with others requires a willingness to pass over their weaknesses, faults and occasional offences, and gave the example of Queen Caroline Matilda of Denmark and Britain, sister of King George III.
To do one’s duty is to peep into the mystery of life, and taste reward from another world.
Samuel Smiles closed his book devoted to character with a reflection on doing one’s duty — meaning neither the bare minimum required by law, nor slavish obedience to authority, but the mysterious, often elusive task which God has entrusted to each one of us.
George Stephenson argued that his steam engines were solar-powered.
Today’s enthusiasts for ‘renewable energy’ have brought Britain’s once-mighty coal industry to an end. Yet judging by George Stephenson’s exchange with William Buckland, the eccentric but brilliant Oxford geologist, there may have been a serious misunderstanding...
Railways not only brought fresh, healthy food to the urban poor, they improved the conditions of working animals.
In the 1850s, London could not house enough cows for its population, so dairymen watered down their milk from cholera-infested roadside pumps, adding snails or sheep’s brains to thicken it (more). No legislation could have solved that dilemma of supply and demand. But railways did.