Quotes by Smith, Sydney

"Oh, don't tell me of facts -- I never believe facts: you know Canning said nothing was so fallacious as facts, except figures."

Smith, Sydney on facts   

"It is always right that a man should be able to render a reason for the faith that is within him."

Smith, Sydney on faith   

"Life is to be fortified by many friendships. To love and to be loved is the greatest happiness of existence."

Smith, Sydney on friends and friendship
16 fans of this quote   

"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."

Smith, Sydney on age and aging   

"Avoid shame but do not seek glory --nothing so expensive as glory."

Smith, Sydney on glory   

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

Smith, Sydney on greatness   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

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

Smith, Sydney on home   

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

Smith, Sydney on ignorance
3 fans of this quote   

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

Smith, Sydney on letters   

"To love and be loved is the great happiness of existence."

Smith, Sydney on love
17 fans of this quote   

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

Smith, Sydney on manners   

"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."

Smith, Sydney on marriage   

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

Smith, Sydney on marriage   

"What would life be without arithmetic, but a scene of horrors?"

Smith, Sydney on mathematics   

"It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can do only a little. Do what you can."

Smith, Sydney on perseverance   

"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."

Smith, Sydney on philosophers and philosophy   

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

Smith, Sydney on poverty and the poor   

"No man can ever end with being superior who will not begin with being inferior."

Smith, Sydney on power   

"Among the smaller duties of life I hardly know any one more important than that of not praising where praise is not due."

Smith, Sydney on praise   

"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."

Smith, Sydney on preachers and preaching   

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

Smith, Sydney on reason
6 fans of this quote   

"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."

Smith, Sydney on evolution   

"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."

Smith, Sydney on love   

"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."

Smith, Sydney on silence   

"He had occasional flashes of silence that made his conversation perfectly delightful."

Smith, Sydney on silence   

"Solitude cherishes great virtues and destroys little ones."

Smith, Sydney on solitude
6 fans of this quote   

"No furniture is so charming as books."

Smith, Sydney on books - reading   

"Live always in the best company when you read."

Smith, Sydney on books - reading   

"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."

Smith, Sydney on theater   

"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."

Smith, Sydney on weather   

"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."

Smith, Sydney on wickedness   

"The writer does the most good who gives his reader the most knowledge and takes from him the least time."

Smith, Sydney on writers and writing   

"The greatest of all mistakes is to do nothing because you can only do a little. Do what you can."

Smith, Sydney on action
5 fans of this quote   

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

Smith, Sydney on 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."

Smith, Sydney on churches   

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

Smith, Sydney on compatibility   

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

Smith, Sydney on conversation   

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

Smith, Sydney on correction   

"A great deal of talent is lost in the world for want of courage."

Smith, Sydney on courage   

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

Smith, Sydney on criticism