Sydney Smith Quotes & Sayings

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. — Sydney Smith

Correspondences are like small clothes before the invention of suspenders; it is impossible to keep them up. — 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. — 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. — Sydney Smith

Solitude cherishes great virtues and destroys little ones. — Sydney Smith

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

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

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

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. — Sydney Smith

We know nothing of tomorrow, our business is to be good and happy today — 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. — Sydney Smith

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. — 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. — Sydney Smith

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

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. — Sydney Smith

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

Politeness is good nature regulated by good sense. — Sydney Smith

Manners are the shadows of virtues; the momentary display of those qualities which our fellow-creatures love and respect. If we strive to become, then, what we strive to appear, manners may often be rendered useful guides to the performance of our duties. — 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. — Sydney Smith

I look upon Switzerland as an inferior sort of Scotland. — Sydney Smith

But now persecution is good, because it exists; every law which originated in ignorance and malice, and gratifies the passions from whence it sprang, we call the wisdom of our ancestors: when such laws are repealed, they will be cruelty and madness; till they are repealed, they are policy and caution. — Sydney Smith

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

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

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

If you want to improve your understanding, drink coffee. — Sydney Smith

Married couples resemble
a pair of scissors,
often moving in opposite directions, yet punishing anyone who gets in between them — Sydney Smith

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

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. — Sydney Smith

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

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

No man can ever end with being superior who will not begin with being inferior. — Sydney Smith

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

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

Never try to reason the prejudice out of a man. It was not reasoned into him, and cannot be reasoned out. — Sydney Smith

It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do little - do what you can. — Sydney Smith

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

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

Science is his forte, and omniscience his foible. — Sydney Smith

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! — Sydney Smith

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

What two ideas are more inseparable than beer and Britannia? — Sydney Smith

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

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

Manners are like the shadows of virtues, they are the momentary display of those qualities which our fellow creatures love and respect. — Sydney Smith

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

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

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". — Sydney Smith

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

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

I never read a book before reviewing it; it prejudices a man so. — Sydney Smith

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

What a pity it is that we have no amusements in England but vice and religion! — 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. — Sydney Smith

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

I always fear that creation will expire before teatime. — 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. — 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. — Sydney Smith

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

All musical people seem to be happy.
It is the engrossing pursuit, -
almost the only innocent and
unpunished passion. — Sydney Smith

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

Live always in the best company when you read. — Sydney Smith

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. — Sydney Smith

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

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

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. — Sydney Smith

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. — 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. — Sydney Smith

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

No furniture is so charming as books. — 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. — Sydney Smith

The dearest things in the world
are our neighbor's eyes;
they cost everybody more
than anything else in housekeeping. — 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. — Sydney Smith

Heaven never helps the men who will not act. — 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. — 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. — Sydney Smith

The fact is that in order to do anything in this world worth doing, we must not stand shivering on the bank thinking of the cold and the danger, but jump in and scramble through as well as we can. — 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. — Sydney Smith