Sydney Smith Quotes

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.

Going to marry her? Impossible! You mean a part of her; he could not marry her all himself. It would be a case, not of bigamy but trigamy; there is enough of her to furnish wives for the whole parish. One man marry her! - it is monstrous! You might people a colony with her; or give an assembly with her; or perhaps take your morning's walk round her, always provided there were frequent resting places, and you were in rude health. I once was rash enough to try walking round her before breakfast, but only got half way and gave it up exhausted. Or you might read the Riot Act and disperse her; in short, you might do anything but marry her!

I have, alas, only one illusion left, and that is the Archbishop of Canterbury.

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

What you don't know would make a great book.

To business that we love we rise bedtime, and go to't with delight.

Find fault when you must find fault in private, and if possible sometime after the offense, rather than at the time.

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

I look upon Switzerland as an inferior sort of Scotland.

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

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

Brevity in writing is
what charity is to all other virtues - righteousness is nothing
without the one,
nor authorship without the other.

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.

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.

[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.

Partial Quote;
"A great deal of talent is lost to the world for want of a little courage".
Full Quote;
"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".

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.

Mankind are always happy for having happiness. So if you make them happy now, you make them happy twenty years from now by the memory of it.

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.

I am glad you like what I said of Mrs. Elizabeth Fry (prison and mental hospital reformer). She is very unpopular with the clergy; examples of living, active virtue disturb our repose and give one to distressing comparisons; we long to burn her alive.

Live always in the best company when you read.

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

Politeness is good nature regulated by good sense.

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

I never read a book before previewing it; it prejudices a man so.

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

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.

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

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.

Many in this world run after felicity like an absent man hunting for his hat, while all the time it is on his head or in his hand.

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.

A life of knowledge is not often a life of injury and crime.

Never talk for half a minute without pausing and giving others a chance to join in.

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

I always fear that creation will expire before teatime.

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

As the French say, there are three sexes - men, women, and clergymen.

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

Thank God for tea! What would the world do without tea! How did it exist? I am glad I was not born before tea.

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.

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

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

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

Never give way to melancholy: nothing encroaches more; I fight against it vigorously. One great remedy is, to take short views of life. Are you happy now? Are you likely to remain so till this evening? or next week? or next year? Then why destroy present happiness by a distant misery, which may never come at all, or you may never live to see it? For every substantial grief has twenty shadows, and most of them shadows of your own making.

You will find people ready enough to do the Samaritan without the oil and twopence.

Heaven never helps the men who will not act.

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