Sydney Smith

A comfortable house is a great source of happiness. It ranks immediately after health and a good conscience.

— Sydney Smith

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

— Sydney Smith

Never talk for half a minute without pausing and giving others a chance to join in.

— 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

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

— Sydney Smith

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

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

A comfortable house is a great source of happiness. It ranks immediately after health and a good conscience.

— 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

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and malice, and gratifies the passions from whence it sprang, we call the wisdom of our ancestors: when such laws are repealed, they will be cruelty and madness; till they are repealed, they are policy and caution.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

In the midst of this sublime and terrible storm [at Sidmouth], Dame Partington, who lived upon the beach, was seen at the door of her house with mop and pattens, trundling her mop, squeezing out the sea-water, and vigorously pushing away the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic was roused; Mrs. Partington's spirit was up. But I need not tell you that the contest was unequal; the Atlantic Ocean beat Mrs. Partington.

— Sydney Smith

The schoolboy whips his taxed top; the beardless youth manages his taxed horse with a taxed bridle on a taxed road; and the dying Englishman, pouring his medicine, which has paid seven per cent, into a spoon that has paid fifteen per cent, flings himself back upon his chintz bed which has paid twenty-two per cent, and expires in the arms of an apothecary who has paid a license of a hundred pounds for the privilege of putting him to death.

— Sydney Smith

Great men hallow a whole people and lift up all who live in their time.

— Sydney Smith

The object of preaching is, constantly to remind mankind of what mankind are constantly forgetting; not to supply the defects of human intelligence, but to fortify the feebleness of human resolutions.

— Sydney Smith

Magnificent spectacle of human happiness.

— 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

Correspondences are like small clothes before the invention of suspenders; it is impossible to keep them up.

— Sydney Smith

Dean Swift's rule is as good for women as for men — never to talk above a half minute without pausing, and giving others an opportunity to strike in.

— Sydney Smith

The fact is that in order to do any thing in this world worth doing, we must not stand shivering on the bank thinking of the cold and the danger, but jump in and scramble through as well as we can.

— Sydney Smith

Every increase of knowledge may possibly render depravity more depraved, as well as it may increase the strength of virtue. It is in itself only power; and its value depends on its application.

— Sydney Smith

Men who prefer any load of infamy, however great, to any pressure of taxation, however light.

— 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

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

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

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

The truth is, that most men want knowledge, not for itself, but for the superiority which knowledge confers; and the means they employ to secure this superiority, are as wrong as the ultimate object, for no man can ever end with being superior, who will not begin with being inferior.

— Sydney Smith

It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do little.

— Sydney Smith

It requires a surgical operation to get a joke well into a Scotch understanding.

— Sydney Smith

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

— Sydney Smith

Preaching has become a byword for long and dull conversation of any kind; and whoever wishes to imply, in any piece of writing, the absence of everything agreeable and inviting, calls it a sermon.

— Sydney Smith

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

— Sydney Smith

Take short views, hope for the best, and trust in God.

— Sydney Smith

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

— Sydney Smith

No furniture so charming as books.

— Sydney Smith

Not body enough to cover his mind decently with; his intellect is improperly exposed.

— 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

Ah, you flavour everything; you are the vanilla of society.

— Sydney Smith

My living in Yorkshire was so far out of the way, that it was actually twelve miles from a lemon.

— Sydney Smith

As the French say, there are three sexes, — men, women, and clergymen.

— Sydney Smith

Praise is the best diet for us, after all.

— Sydney Smith

Live always in the best company when you read.

— Sydney Smith

Never give way to melancholy; resist it steadily, for the habit will encroach.

— Sydney Smith

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

— Sydney Smith

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

Macaulay is like a book in breeches...He has occasional flashes of silence, that make his conversation perfectly delightful.

— 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

In composing, as a general rule, run your pen through every other word you have written; you have no idea what vigour it will give your style.

— Sydney Smith

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

— Sydney Smith

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

— Sydney Smith

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

Truth is its [justice's] handmaid, freedom is its child, peace is its companion, safety walks in its steps, victory follows in its train; it is the brightest emanation from the Gospel; it is the attribute of God.

— 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

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

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

— Sydney Smith

The Smiths never had any arms, and have invariably sealed their letters with their thumbs.

— Sydney Smith

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

— Sydney Smith

To take Macaulay out of literature and society and put him in the House of Commons, is like taking the chief physician out of London during a pestilence.

— Sydney Smith

Heat, ma'am!" I said; "it was so dreadful here, that I found there was nothing left for it but to take off my flesh and sit in my bones.

— Sydney Smith

Let onion atoms lurk within the bowlAnd, scarce suspected, animate the whole.

— Sydney Smith

Serenely full, the epicure would say,Fate cannot harm me, I have dined today.

— Sydney Smith

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

If you could be alarmed into the semblance of modesty, you would charm everybody; but remember my joke against you about the Moon and the Solar System;—"Damn the solar system! bad light — planets too distant — pestered with comets — feeble contriviance; — could make a better with great ease."

— Sydney Smith