Sydney Smith - Man Quotes

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In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book? Or goes to an American play? or looks at an American picture or statue? What does the world yet owe to American physicians or surgeons? What new substances have their chemists discovered? Or what old ones have they advanced? What new constellations have been discovered by the telescopes of Americans? Who drinks out of American glasses? Or eats from American plates? Or wears American coats or gowns? or sleeps in American blankets? Finally, under which of the old tyrannical governments of Europe is every sixth man a slave, whom his fellow-creatures may buy and sell and torture?

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

Sydney Smith
Let every man be occupied, and occupied in the highest employment of which his nature is capable, and die with the consciousness that he has done his best.

Sydney Smith
He was a one-book man. Some men have only one book in them; others, a library.

Sydney Smith
One evil in old age is, that as your time is come, you think that every little illness is the beginning of the end. When a man expects to be arrested, every knock at the door is an alarm.

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

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
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
When I hear any man talk of an unalterable law, the only effect it produces upon me is to convince me that he is an unalterable fool.

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

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

Sydney Smith