Sydney Smith Quotes, Sayings, Remarks, Thoughts and Speeches
Sydney Smith Quotes and Sayings
- 1
A comfortable house is a great source of happiness. It ranks immediately after health and a good conscience.
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- 2
A great deal of talent is lost to the world for want of a little courage. Every day sends to their graves obscure men whose timidity prevented them from making a first effort.
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- 3
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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- 4
As the French say, there are three sexes - men, women, and clergymen.
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- 5
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.
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- 6
Correspondences are like small clothes before the invention of suspenders; it is impossible to keep them up.
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- 7
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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- 8
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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- 9
Find fault when you must find fault in private, and if possible sometime after the offense, rather than at the time.
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- 10
Great men hallow a whole people, and lift up all who live in their time.
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- 11
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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- 12
Heaven never helps the men who will not act.
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- 13
I have, alas, only one illusion left, and that is the Archbishop of Canterbury.
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- 14
I look upon Switzerland as an inferior sort of Scotland.
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- 15
I never read a book before previewing it; it prejudices a man so.
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- 16
In composing, as a general rule, run your pen through every other word you have written; you have no idea what vigor it will give your style.
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- 17
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.
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- 18
It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do little - do what you can.
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- 19
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.
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- 20
Let the Dean and Canons lay their heads together and the thing will be done.
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- 21
Life is to be fortified by many friendships. To love and to be loved is the greatest happiness of existence.
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- 22
Live always in the best company when you read.
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- 23
Madam, I have been looking for a person who disliked gravy all my life; let us swear eternal friendship.
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- 24
Manners are like the shadows of virtues, they are the momentary display of those qualities which our fellow creatures love and respect.
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- 25
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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- 26
Never give way to melancholy; resist it steadily, for the habit will encroach.
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- 27
Never talk for half a minute without pausing and giving others a chance to join in.
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- 28
No man can ever end with being superior who will not begin with being inferior.
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- 29
Poverty us no disgrace to a man, but it is confoundedly inconvenient.
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- 30
Science is his forte, and omniscience his foible.
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- 31
Solitude cherishes great virtues and destroys little ones.
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- 32
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.
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- 33
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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- 34
To business that we love we rise bedtime, and go to't with delight.
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- 35
To do anything in this world worth doing, we must not stand back shivering and thinking of the cold and danger, but jump in, and scramble through as well as we can.
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- 36
What a pity it is that we have no amusements in England but vice and religion!
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- 37
What would life be without arithmetic, but a scene of horrors?
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- 38
What you don't know would make a great book.
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- 39
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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