Sydney Smith Quotes

100 Sourced Quotes

No furniture so charming as books, even if you never open them or read a single word.

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

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

Sydney Smith
It is the 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
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
A great deal of talent is lost to the world for the want of a little courage. Every day sends to their graves a number of obscure men who have only remained obscure because their timidity has prevented them from making a first effort.

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
If you choose to represent the various parts in life by holes upon a table, of different shapes — some circular, some triangular, some square, some oblong—and the persons acting these parts by bits of wood of similar shapes, we shall generally find that the triangular person has got into the square hole, the oblong into the triangular, and a square person has squeezed himself into the round hole.

Sydney Smith
We shall generally find that the triangular person has got into the square hole, the oblong into the triangular, and a square person has squeezed himself into the round hole. The officer and the office, the doer and the thing done, seldom fit so exactly that we can say they were almost made for each other.

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.

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
The pleasure arising from wit proceeds from our surprise at suddenly discovering two things to be similar, in which we suspected no similarity.

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
We must despise no sort of talent: they all have their separate duties and uses; all, the happiness of man for their object: they all improve, exalt, and gladden life.

Sydney Smith
I have seen nobody since I saw you, but persons in orders. My only varieties are vicars, rectors, curates, and every now and then (by way of turbot) an archdeacon.

Sydney Smith
If there is a pure and elevated pleasure in this world it is a roast pheasant with bread sauce. Barn door fowls for dissenters but for the real Churchman, the thirty-nine times articled clerk—the pheasant, the pheasant.

Sydney Smith
You remember Thurlow's answer to some one complaining of the injustice of a company. "Why, you never expected justice from a company, did you? they have neither a soul to lose, nor a body to kick."

Sydney Smith
That knuckle-end of England—that land of Calvin, oatcakes, and sulphur.

Sydney Smith
Looked as if she had walked straight out of the ark.

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

Sydney Smith
That sign of old age, extolling the past at the expense of the present.

Sydney Smith
My definition of marriage…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
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
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
Manners are the shadows of virtues; the momentary display of those qualities which our fellow creatures love, and respect.

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

Sydney Smith
I have no relish for the country; it is a kind of healthy grave.

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

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

Sydney Smith
All great and extraordinary actions come from the heart. There are seasons in human affairs, when qualities fit enough to conduct the common business of life, are feeble and useless; and when men must trust to emotion, for that safety which reason at such times can never give.

Sydney Smith