Sydney Smith - Life Quotes

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

Sydney Smith
Take short views of human life—not further than dinner or tea.

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

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

Sydney Smith