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It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do a little. Do what you can.
Sydney Smith
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No furniture so charming as books, even if you never open them or read a single word.
Sydney Smith
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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
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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
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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
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Life is to be fortified by many friendships. To love, and to be loved, is the greatest happiness of existence.
Sydney Smith
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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
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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
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Marriage resembles a pair of shears, so joined that they can not be separated; often moving in opposite directions, yet always punishing anyone who comes between them.
Sydney Smith
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On hearing a suggestion to build a wooden pavement around St Paul's:
Let the Dean and Canons lay their heads together and the thing will be done.
Sydney Smith
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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
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No one minds what Jeffrey says:… it is not more than a week ago that I heard him speak disrespectfully of the equator.
Sydney Smith
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Never give way to melancholy; resist it steadily, for the habit will encroach.
Sydney Smith
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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
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Take short views of human life—not further than dinner or tea.
Sydney Smith
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When you rise in the morning, form a resolution to make the day a happy one for a fellow creature.
Sydney Smith
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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
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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
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The moment the very name of Ireland is mentioned, the English seem to bid adieu to common feeling, common prudence, and common sense, and to act with the barbarity of tyrants, and the fatuity of idiots.
Sydney Smith
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Take short views, hope for the best, and trust in God.
Sydney Smith
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He has spent all his life in letting down empty buckets into empty wells; and he is frittering away his age in trying to draw them up again.
Sydney Smith
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What would life be without arithmetic, but a scene of horrors?
Sydney Smith
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What two ideas are more inseparable than Beer and Britannia?
Sydney Smith
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Manners are the shadows of virtues; the momentary display of those qualities which our fellow creatures love, and respect.
Sydney Smith
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Great men hallow a whole people and lift up all who live in their time.
Sydney Smith
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Quote of the day
I am the slave of my baptism. Parents, you have caused my misfortune, and you have caused your own.
Arthur Rimbaud
Sydney Smith
Creative Commons
Born:
June 3, 1771
Died:
February 22, 1845
(aged 73)
Bio:
Sydney Smith was an English wit, writer and Anglican cleric.
Known for:
A memoir of the Reverend Sydney Smith
Peter Plymley's letters, and selected essays
The works of the Rev. Sydney Smith (1839)
Most used words:
man
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life
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american
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book
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tea
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triangular
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square
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person
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human
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hole
,
women
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common
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paid
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taxed
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atlantic
Sydney Smith on Wikipedia
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