Best 54 quotes of Sydney Smith on MyQuotes

Sydney Smith

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    Sydney Smith

    A comfortable house is a great source of happiness. It ranks immediately after health and a good conscience.

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    Sydney Smith

    A great deal of talent is lost to the world for the want of a little courage. Every day sends to their graves a number of obscure men who have only remained obscure because their timidity has prevented them from making a first effort; and who, if they could only have been induced to begin, would in all probability have gone great lengths in the career of fame.

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    Sydney Smith

    A great deal of talent is lost to the world for want of a little courage.

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    Sydney Smith

    A man who wishes to make his way in life could do no better than go through the world with a boiling tea-kettle in his hand.

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    Sydney Smith

    Among the smaller duties of life I hardly know any one more important than that of not praising where praise is not due.

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    Sydney Smith

    Avoid shame, but do not seek glory; nothing so expensive as glory.

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    Sydney Smith

    Do not try to push your way through to the front ranks of your profession; do not run after distinctions and rewards; but do your utmost to find an entry into the world of beauty.

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    Sydney Smith

    Errors, to be dangerous, must have a great deal of truth mingled with them. It is only from this alliance that they can ever obtain an extensive circulation.

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    Sydney Smith

    Great men hallow a whole people, and lift up all who live in their time.

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    Sydney Smith

    Have the courage to be ignorant of a great number of things, in order to avoid the calamity of being ignorant of everything.

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    Sydney Smith

    Heat, ma am! It was so dreadful here that I found there was nothing left for it but to take off my flesh and sit in my bones.

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    Sydney Smith

    He not only overflowed with learning, but stood in the slop.

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    Sydney Smith

    He who drinks a tumbler of London water has literally in his stomach more animated beings than there are men, women, and children on the face of the globe.

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    Sydney Smith

    His enemies might have said before that he talked rather too much; but now he has occasional flashes of silence, that make his conversation perfectly delightful.

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    Sydney Smith

    Hope is the belief, more or less strong, that joy will come.

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    Sydney Smith

    How can a bishop marry? How can he flirt? The most he can say is "I will see you in the vestry after service.

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    Sydney Smith

    Human beings cling to their delicious tyrannies and to their exquisite nonsense, till death stares them in the face.

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    Sydney Smith

    I always fear that creation will expire before teatime.

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    Sydney Smith

    If I were to begin life again, I would devote it to music. It is the only cheap and unpunished rapture upon earth.

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    Sydney Smith

    If you want to improve your understanding, drink coffee.

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    Sydney Smith

    I look upon Switzerland as an inferior sort of Scotland.

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    Sydney Smith

    It is no more necessary that a man should remember the different dinners and suppers which have made him healthy, than the different books which have made him wise. Let us see the results of good food in a strong body, and the results of great reading in a full and powerful mind.

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    Sydney Smith

    Let the Dean and Canons lay their heads together and the thing will be done.

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    Sydney Smith

    Life is to be fortified by many friendships. To love and to be loved is the greatest happiness of existence.

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    Sydney Smith

    Lucy, dear child, mind your arithmetic. You know in the first sum of yours I ever saw there was a mistake. You had carried two (as a cab is licensed to do), and you ought, dear Lucy, to have carried but one. Is this a trifle? What would life be without arithmetic, but a scene of horrors.

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    Sydney Smith

    Madam, I have been looking for a person who disliked gravy all my life; let us swear eternal friendship.

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    Sydney Smith

    Manners are the shadows of virtues; the momentary display of those qualities which our fellow creatures love, and respect.

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    Sydney Smith

    Marriage resembles a pair of shears, so joined that they cannot be separated; often moving in opposite directions, yet always punishing anyone who comes between them.

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    Sydney Smith

    Never give way to melancholy; resist it steadily, for the habit will encroach.

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    Sydney Smith

    No furniture is so charming as books.

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    Sydney Smith

    Oh, don't tell me of facts, I never believe facts; you know, [George] Canning said nothing was so fallacious as facts, except figures.

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    Sydney Smith

    People who love only once in their lives are shallow people. What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity, I call either the lethargy of custom, or their lack of imagination

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    Sydney Smith

    Politeness is good nature regulated by good sense.

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    Sydney Smith

    Poverty is no disgrace to a man, but it is confoundedly inconvenient.

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    Sydney Smith

    Resolve to make at least one person happy every day, and then in ten years you may have made three thousand, six hundred and fifty persons happy, or brightened a small town by your contribution to the fund of general enjoyment.

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    Sydney Smith

    Scotland: That garret of the earth - that knuckle-end of England - that land of Calvin, oatcakes, and sulfur.

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    Sydney Smith

    Solitude cherishes great virtues and destroys little ones.

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    Sydney Smith

    Some men have only one book in them, others a library.

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    Sydney Smith

    Take short views, hope for the best and trust in God.

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    Sydney Smith

    [T]he 47th proposition in Euclid might now be voted down with as much ease as any proposition in politics; and therefore if Lord Hawkesbury hates the abstract truths of science as much as he hates concrete truth in human affairs, now is his time for getting rid of the multiplication table, and passing a vote of censure upon the pretensions of the hypotenuse.

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    Sydney Smith

    The longer I live, the more I am convinced that the apothecary is of more importance than Seneca; and that half the unhappiness in the world proceeds from little stoppages; from a duct choked up, from food pressing in the wrong place, from a vexed duodenum, or an agitated pylorus.

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    Sydney Smith

    The main question to a novel is -- did it amuse? were you surprised at dinner coming so soon? did you mistake eleven for ten? were you too late to dress? and did you sit up beyond the usual hour? If a novel produces these effects, it is good; if it does not -- story, language, love, scandal itself cannot save it. It is only meant to please; and it must do that or it does nothing.

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    Sydney Smith

    The thing about performance, even if it's only an illusion, is that it is a celebration of the fact that we do contain within ourselves infinite possibilities.

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    Sydney Smith

    The two women exchanged the type of glance women use when there is no knife handy.

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    Sydney Smith

    we know nothing of tomorrow, our business is to be good and happy today

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    Sydney Smith

    Whatever you are by nature, keep to it; never desert your line of talent. Be what nature intended you for, and you will succeed.

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    Sydney Smith

    What two ideas are more inseparable than beer and Britannia?

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    Sydney Smith

    What would life be without arithmetic, but a scene of horrors?

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    Sydney Smith

    When I hear any man talk of an unalterable law, the only effect it produces on me is to convince me that he is an unalterable fool

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    Sydney Smith

    When you rise in the morning, form a resolution to make the day a happy one for a fellow creature.