I have come to the conclusion that mankind consume too much food.
—Sydney Smith
Never talk for half a minute without pausing and giving others a chance to join in.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Conversation
It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do a little. Do what you can.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Doing Your Best, Doing, Helping
Never try to reason the prejudice out of a man. It wasn’t reasoned into him, and it cannot be reasoned out.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Wisdom
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
Topics: Virtue, Wickedness, Evil
Say everything for vice which you can, magnify any pleasures as much as you please, but don’t believe you have any secret for sending on quicker the sluggish blood, and for refreshing the faded nerve.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Vice
I have no relish for the country; it is a kind of healthy grave.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Country
That sign of old age, extolling the past at the expense of the present.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Reflection, Old Age
How can a bishop marry? How can he flirt? The most he can say is “I will see you in the vestry after service.”
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Religion, Churches
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
Topics: Work
The writer does the most good who gives his reader the most knowledge and takes from him the least time.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Authors & Writing, Writing
A comfortable house is a great source of happiness. It ranks immediately after health and a good conscience.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Home
There is but one method, and that is hard labor; and a man who will not pay that price for greatness had better at once dedicate himself to the pursuit of the fox, or to talk of bullocks, and glory in the goad.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Greatness, Labor
Contempt is commonly taken by the young for an evidence of understanding; but it is neither difficult to acquire, nor meritorious when acquired. To discover the imperfections of others is penetration; to hate them for their faults is contempt. We may be clear sighted without being malevolent, and make use of the errors we discover, to learn caution, not to gratify satire.
—Sydney Smith
When you rise in the morning, form a resolution to make the day a happy one for a fellow creature.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Kindness, Compassion
It is the calling of great men, not so much to preach new truths, as to rescue from oblivion those old truths which it is our wisdom to remember and our weakness to forget.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Truth, Memory
Children are excellent physiognomists, and soon discover their real friends.—Luttrell calls them all lunatics, and so in fact they are.—What is childhood but a series of happy delusions?
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Children
If you wish to keep the mind clear and the body healthy, abstain from all fermented liquors.
—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
Topics: Carpe-diem
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
Topics: Knowledge
I once gave a lady two-and-twenty receipts against melancholy; one was a bright fire; another, to remember all the pleasant things said to her; another, to keep a box of sugarplums on the chimney-piece and a kettle simmering on the hob. I thought this mere trifling at the moment, but have in after life discovered how true it is that these little pleasures often banish melancholy better than higher and more exalted objects; and that no means ought to be thought too trifling which can oppose it either in ourselves or in others.
—Sydney Smith
We are told, “Let not the sun go down in your wrath,” but I would add, never act or write till it has done so. This rule has saved me from many an act of folly. It is wonderful what a different view we take of the same event four-and-twenty hours after it has happened.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Reflection
Madam, I have been looking for a person who disliked gravy all my life; let us swear eternal friendship.
—Sydney Smith
Dislike of innovation proceeds sometimes from the disgust excited by false humanity, canting hypocrisy, and silly enthusiasm.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Innovation
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.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Idleness
All musical people seem to be happy; it is to them the engrossing pursuit; almost the only innocent and unpunished passion.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Music
Pride is not the heritage of man; humility should dwell with frailty, and atone for ignorance, error, and imperfection.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Pride
What two ideas are more inseparable than beer and Britannia?
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Britain
Never give way to melancholy; resist it steadily, for the habit will encroach.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Hedonism, Self-Pity
There is the same difference between the tongues of some, as between the hour and the minute hand; one goes ten times as fast, and the other signifies ten times as much.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Talking
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Richard Hooker English Theologian, Political Theorist
- Beilby Porteus Bishop of London
- Jeremy Collier English Anglican Clergyman
- John Wilkins English Anglican Clergyman
- William Ralph Inge English Anglican Clergyman
- Frances Ridley Havergal English Anglican Poet
- William Cowper English Anglican Poet
- William Croswell Doane American Anglican Hymn writer
- Daniel Defoe English Writer
- Thomas de Quincey English Essayist, Critic
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