Words matter. These are the best Sydney Smith Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
Great men hallow a whole people, and lift up all who live in their time.
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.
What you don’t know would make a great book.
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.
Live always in the best company when you read.
Poverty is no disgrace to a man, but it is confoundedly inconvenient.
Have the courage to be ignorant of a great number of things, in order to avoid the calamity of being ignorant of everything.
Heaven never helps the men who will not act.
I never read a book before previewing it; it prejudices a man so.
Science is his forte, and omniscience his foible.
What you don’t know would make a great book.
As the French say, there are three sexes – men, women, and clergymen.
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.
It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do little – do what you can.
No man can ever end with being superior who will not begin with being inferior.
I never read a book before previewing it; it prejudices a man so.
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.
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.
A comfortable house is a great source of happiness. It ranks immediately after health and a good conscience.
Science is his forte, and omniscience his foible.
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.
What would life be without arithmetic, but a scene of horrors?
Great men hallow a whole people, and lift up all who live in their time.
Whatever you are by nature, keep to it; never desert your line of talent. Be what nature intended you for, and you will succeed.
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.
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.
Let the Dean and Canons lay their heads together and the thing will be done.
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.
Life is to be fortified by many friendships. To love and to be loved is the greatest happiness of existence.
What a pity it is that we have no amusements in England but vice and religion!
To business that we love we rise bedtime, and go to’t with delight.
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.
Never talk for half a minute without pausing and giving others a chance to join in.
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.
A comfortable house is a great source of happiness. It ranks immediately after health and a good conscience.
Find fault when you must find fault in private, and if possible sometime after the offense, rather than at the time.
To business that we love we rise bedtime, and go to’t with delight.
As the French say, there are three sexes – men, women, and clergymen.
Correspondences are like small clothes before the invention of suspenders; it is impossible to keep them up.
Correspondences are like small clothes before the invention of suspenders; it is impossible to keep them up.
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.
What would life be without arithmetic, but a scene of horrors?
No man can ever end with being superior who will not begin with being inferior.
Heaven never helps the men who will not act.
Never give way to melancholy; resist it steadily, for the habit will encroach.
