Sydney Smith Quotes
Quotations and aphorisms by 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
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The thing about performance, even if it's only an illusion, is that it is a celebration of the fact that we do contain within ourselves infinite possibilities.
~Sydney Smith
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Heaven never helps the men who will not act.
~Sydney Smith
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I have, alas, only one illusion left, and that is the Archbishop of Canterbury.
~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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Manners are like the shadows of virtues, they are the momentary display of those qualities which our fellow creatures love and respect.
~Sydney Smith
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Poverty us no disgrace to a man, but it is confoundedly inconvenient.
~Sydney Smith
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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
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What you don't know would make a great book.
~Sydney Smith
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I never read a book before previewing it; it prejudices a man so.
~Sydney Smith
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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
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Madam, I have been looking for a person who disliked gravy all my life; let us swear eternal friendship.
~Sydney Smith
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What would life be without arithmetic, but a scene of horrors?
~Sydney Smith
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Marriage 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
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Find fault when you must find fault in private, and if possible sometime after the offense, rather than at the time.
~Sydney Smith
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Live always in the best company when you read.
~Sydney Smith
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No man can ever end with being superior who will not begin with being inferior.
~Sydney Smith
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To business that we love we rise bedtime, and go to't with delight.
~Sydney Smith
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What a pity it is that we have no amusements in England but vice and religion!
~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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Never talk for half a minute without pausing and giving others a chance to join in.
~Sydney Smith
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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
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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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As the French say, there are three sexes - men, women, and clergymen.
~Sydney Smith
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A comfortable house is a great source of happiness. It ranks immediately after health and a good conscience.
~Sydney Smith
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Correspondences are like small clothes before the invention of suspenders; it is impossible to keep them up.
~Sydney Smith
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Solitude cherishes great virtues and destroys little ones.
~Sydney Smith
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Let the Dean and Canons lay their heads together and the thing will be done.
~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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It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do little - do what you can.
~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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I look upon Switzerland as an inferior sort of Scotland.
~Sydney Smith
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Whatever you are by nature, keep to it; never desert your line of talent. Be what nature intended you for, and you will succeed.
~Sydney Smith
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In composing, as a general rule, run your pen through every other word you have written; you have no idea what vigor it will give your style.
~Sydney Smith
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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
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Science is his forte, and omniscience his foible.
~Sydney Smith
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To do anything in this world worth doing, we must not stand back shivering and thinking of the cold and danger, but jump in, and scramble through as well as we can.
~Sydney Smith
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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
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