Sydney Smith

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

— Sydney Smith

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.

— Sydney Smith

No furniture is so charming as books.

— Sydney Smith

Live always in the best company when you read.

— 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

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

— Sydney Smith

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

— 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

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

— Sydney Smith

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

— Sydney Smith

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

— Sydney Smith

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

— Sydney Smith

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

— Sydney Smith

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

— Sydney Smith

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

— Sydney Smith

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

— 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

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

— Sydney Smith

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

— 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

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.

— Sydney Smith

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

— Sydney Smith

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

— Sydney Smith

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

— 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

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

— Sydney Smith

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

— 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

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

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

— Sydney Smith

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.

— Sydney Smith

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.

— 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

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

— Sydney Smith

Solitude cherishes great virtues and destroys little ones.

— Sydney Smith

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.

— 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

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

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

— Sydney Smith

For Gods sake, do not drag me into another war! I am worn down, and worn out, with crusading and defending Europe, and protecting mankind; I must think a little of myself.

— Sydney Smith

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

Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goals.

— Sydney Smith