Sydney Smith Quotes (110 Quotes)


    The dearest things in the world are our neighbor's eyes they cost everybody more than anything else in housekeeping

    When you rise in the morning, form a resolution to make the day a happy one to a fellow creature.

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

    Heaven never helps the men who will not act.

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


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

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

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

    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.

    A nation grown free in a single day is a child born with the limbs and the vigor of a man, who would take a drawn sword for his rattle, and set the house in a blaze that he might chuckle over the splendor.

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

    A wise man struggling with adversity is said by some heathen writer to be a spectacle on which the gods might look down with pleasure.

    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.

    To business that we love we rise bedtime, and go to't with delight.

    No one minds what Jeffrey says . . it is not more than a week ago that I heard him speak disrespectfully of the equator.

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

    A life of knowledge is not often a life of injury and crime

    No child is born a criminal no child is born an angel he's just born.

    Whatever you are from nature, keep to it never desert your own line of talent. Be what nature intended you for, and you will succeed be anything else, and you will be ten thousand times worse than nothing.

    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.

    All this class of pleasures inspires me with the same nausea as I feel at the sight of rich plum-cake or sweetmeats I prefer the driest bread of common life.

    I am convinced digestion is the great secret of life.

    There is one piece of advice, in a life of study, which I think no one will object to and that is, every now and then to be completely idle - to do nothing at all.

    I have, alas, only one illusion left, and that is the Archbishop of Canterbury.

    It is a bore, I admit, to be past seventy, for you are left for execution, and are daily expecting the death-warrant but it is not anything very capital we quit. We are, at the close of life, only hurried away from stomach-aches, pains in the joints, from sleepless nights and unamusing days, from weakness, ugliness, and nervous tremors but we shall all meet again in another planet, cured of all our defects.

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

    Oh, don't tell me of facts -- I never believe facts you know Canning said nothing was so fallacious as facts, except figures.

    It is natural to every man to wish for distinction, and the praise of those who can confer honor by their praise, in spite of all false philosophy, is sweet to every human heart but as eminence can be but the lot of a few, patience of obscurity is a

    Married couples resemble a pair of scissors, often moving in opposite directions, yet punishing anyone who gets in between them.

    What you don't know would make a great book.

    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.

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

    Whatever the will commands, the whole man must do the empire of the will over all the faculties being absolutely over-ruling and despotic.

    Live always in the best company when you read.

    Serenely full, the epicure would say, Fate cannot harm me I have dined to-day.

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

    Daniel Webster struck me much like a steam-engine in trousers.

    Have the courage to be ignorant of a great number of things, in order to avoid the calamity of being ignorant of everything.

    Find fault when you must find fault in private, and if possible sometime after the offense, rather than at the time.

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

    A Curate - there is something which excites compassion in the very name of a Curate


    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. The officer and the office, the doer and the thing done, seldom fit so exactly that we can say they were almost made for each other.

    A great deal of talent is lost in the world for want of courage.

    '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.'

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

    To love and to be loved is the greatest happiness.

    I am just going to pray for you at St. Paul's, but with no very lively hope of success.

    We cultivate literature on a little oatmeal.

    Manners are like the shadows of virtues, they are the momentary display of those qualities which our fellow creatures love and respect.


    More Sydney Smith Quotations (Based on Topics)


    Man - Life - Books - World - Success - Mastery & Expertise - Happiness - Time - Courage - Sense & Perception - Praise - Nature - Pleasure - Danger & Risk - Heaven - Truth - Business & Commerce - Patience - Wisdom & Knowledge - View All Sydney Smith Quotations

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    Jesus Christ - Buddha - Sun Myung Moon - Richard Cardinal Cushing - Pope John Paul II - Pat Robertson - Max Lucado - Malcom X - Ignatius Loyola - Bodhidharma


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