Thoughts from 150 years ago that seem apt today

Samuel Smiles wrote the original self help book back in 1859 and you can read a copy for free from the Gutenberg Project.

I just started reading it and this paragraph caught my attention;

National progress is the sum of individual industry, energy, and uprightness, as national decay is of individual idleness, selfishness, and vice. What we are accustomed to decry as great social evils, will, for the most part, be found to be but the outgrowth of man's own perverted life; and though we may endeavour to cut them down and extirpate them by means of Law, they will only spring up again with fresh luxuriance in some other form, unless the conditions of personal life and character are radically improved. If this view be correct, then it follows that the highest patriotism and philanthropy consist, not so much in altering laws and modifying institutions, as in helping and stimulating men to elevate and improve themselves by their own free
and independent individual action.

There is a lot in that paragraph that applies just as strongly today as it did 150 years ago.