Sydney Smith
» Action » “The greatest of all mistakes is to do nothing because you can only do a little. Do what you can.”
» Age and Aging » “It is a bore, I admit, to be past seventy, for you are left for execution, and are daily expecting the death-warrant; but it is not anything very capital we quit. We are, at the close of life, only hurried away from stomach-aches, pains in the joints, from sleepless nights and unamusing days, from weakness, ugliness, and nervous tremors; but we shall all meet again in another planet, cured of all our defects.”
» Books and Reading » “No furniture is so charming as books.”
» Books and Reading » “Live always in the best company when you read.”
» Churches » “How can a bishop marry? How can he flirt? The most he can say is ”I will see you in the vestry after service.””
» Churches » “I have, alas, only one illusion left, and that is the Archbishop of Canterbury.”
» Compatibility » “Madam, I have been looking for a person who disliked gravy all my life; let us swear eternal friendship.”
» Conversation » “Never talk for half a minute without pausing and giving others a chance to join in.”
» Correction » “Find fault when you must find fault in private, and if possible sometime after the offense, rather than at the time.”
» Courage » “A great deal of talent is lost in the world for want of courage.”
» Critics and Criticism » “I never read a book before reviewing it; it prejudices a man so.”
» Facts » “Oh, don’t tell me of facts — I never believe facts: you know Canning said nothing was so fallacious as facts, except figures.”
» Faith » “It is always right that a man should be able to render a reason for the faith that is within him.”
» Glory » “Avoid shame but do not seek glory –nothing so expensive as glory.”
» Greatness » “Great men hallow a whole people, and lift up all who live in their time.”
» Home » “A comfortable house is a great source of happiness. It ranks immediately after health and a good conscience.”
» Ignorance » “Have the courage to be ignorant of a great number of things, in order to avoid the calamity of being ignorant of everything.”
» Letters » “Correspondences are like small clothes before the invention of suspenders; it is impossible to keep them up.”
» Love » “To love and be loved is the great happiness of existence.”
» Manners » “Manners are like the shadows of virtues, they are the momentary display of those qualities which our fellow creatures love and respect.”
» Marriage » “Married couples resemble a pair of scissors, often moving in opposite directions, yet punishing anyone who gets in between them.”
» Marriage » “It 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.”
» Mathematics » “What would life be without arithmetic, but a scene of horrors?”
» Perseverance » “It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can do only a little. Do what you can.”
» Philosophers and Philosophy » “Bishop Berkeley destroyed this world in one volume octavo; and nothing remained, after his time, but mind; which experienced a similar fate from the hand of Mr. Hume in 1737.”
» Poverty and The Poor » “Poverty is no disgrace to a man, but it is confoundedly inconvenient.”
» Power » “No man can ever end with being superior who will not begin with being inferior.”
» Praise » “Among the smaller duties of life I hardly know any one more important than that of not praising where praise is not due.”
» Preachers and Preaching » “The object of preaching is to constantly remind mankind of what they keep forgetting; not to supply the intellect, but to fortify the feebleness of human resolutions.”
» Reason » “Never try to reason the prejudice out of a man. It was not reasoned into him, and cannot be reasoned out.”
» Revolutions and Revolutionaries » “A nation grown free in a single day is a child born with the limbs and the vigor of a man, who would take a drawn sword for his rattle, and set the house in a blaze that he might chuckle over the splendor.”
» Self-love » “Whatever you are from nature, keep to it; never desert your own line of talent. Be what nature intended you for, and you will succeed; be anything else, and you will be ten thousand times worse than nothing.”
» Silence » “He had occasional flashes of silence that made his conversation perfectly delightful.”
» Silence » “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.”
» Solitude » “Solitude cherishes great virtues and destroys little ones.”
» Theater » “All this class of pleasures inspires me with the same nausea as I feel at the sight of rich plum-cake or sweetmeats; I prefer the driest bread of common life.”
» Weather » “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.”
» Wickedness » “It is safest to be moderately base — to be flexible in shame, and to be always ready for what is generous, good and just, when anything is to be gained by virtue.”
» Writers and Writing » “The writer does the most good who gives his reader the most knowledge and takes from him the least time.”
