Famous Sydney Smith Quotations

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"Never try to reason the prejudice out of a man. It was not reasoned into him, and cannot be reasoned out."
by Sydney Smith
"It is always right that a man should be able to render a reason for the faith that is within him."
by Sydney Smith
"Live always in the best company when you read."
by Sydney Smith
"Ah, you flavor everything; you are the vanilla of society"
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."
by Sydney Smith
"A great deal of talent is lost to the world for the want of a little courage."
by Sydney Smith
"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."
by Sydney Smith
"He had occasional flashes of silence, that made his conversation perfectly delightful."
by 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."
by Sydney Smith
"He not only overflowed with learning, he stood in the slop."
by Sydney Smith
"He not only overflowed with learning, but stood in the slop."
by Sydney Smith
"I have no relish for the country; it is a kind of healthy grave."
by Sydney Smith
"It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do a little. Do what you can."
by Sydney Smith
"Life is to be fortified by many friendships. To love and to be loved is the greatest happiness of existence."
by Sydney Smith
"Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goals."
by Sydney Smith
"Scotland: That garret of the earth - that knuckle-end of England - that land of Calvin, oat-cakes, and sulphur."
by Sydney Smith
"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."
by Sydney Smith
"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."
by Sydney Smith
"What would the world do without tea? - how did it exist? I am glad I was not born before tea."
by Sydney Smith
"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 thousands times worse than nothing."
by Sydney Smith
"Whatever you are by nature, keep to it; never desert your line of talent. Be what nature intended you for and you will succeed."
by Sydney Smith
"Whatever you are by nature, keep to it never desert your line of talent. Be what nature intended you for and you will succeed."
by Sydney Smith
"You must not think me necessarily foolish because I am facetious, nor will I consider you necessarily wise because you are grave."
by Sydney Smith
"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."
by Sydney Smith
"Avoid shame but do not seek glory --nothing so expensive as glory."
by Sydney Smith
"Great men hallow a whole people, and lift up all who live in their time."
by Sydney Smith
"Manners are like the shadows of virtues, they are the momentary display of those qualities which our fellow creatures love and respect."
by Sydney Smith
"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."
by Sydney Smith
"Granted there are instances in which children have been reared in an atmosphere of inconsistency where value training of any kind was entirely missing; but even in these cases, it is the lack of loving guidance and structure rather than the lack of punitive retribution that has triggered the behavioral manifestations of delinquency. In a high percentage of court cases, there is evidence that the child has met with punishment that has not only been frequent but in many cases excessive. In fact, one of the sources of the child's own inadequate development is the model of open violence provided by the parent who has resorted repeatedly to corporal punishment, usually because of his own limited imagination. This indoctrination into a world where only might makes right and where all strength is invested in the authority of the mother or of the father not only makes it easy for the child to develop aggressive patterns of behavior but makes him emotionally distant and distrustful."
by Sydney Smith
"Poverty is no disgrace to a man, but it is confoundedly inconvenient."
by Sydney Smith
"No furniture is so charming as books."
by Sydney Smith
"Find fault when you must find fault in private, and if possible sometime after the offense, rather than at the time."
by Sydney Smith
"I have, alas, only one illusion left, and that is the Archbishop of Canterbury."
by Sydney Smith
"How can a bishop marry? How can he flirt? The most he can say is I will see you in the vestry after service."
by Sydney Smith
"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."
by Sydney Smith
"I am convinced digestion is the great secret of life."
by Sydney Smith
"His enemies might have said before that he talked rather too much; but now he has occasional flashes of silence, that make his conversation perfectly delightful."
by Sydney Smith
"He had occasional flashes of silence that made his conversation perfectly delightful."
by Sydney Smith
"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."
by Sydney Smith
"It resembles a pair of shears, so joined that they cannot be separated, often moving in opposite directions, yet always punishing anyone who c..."
by Sydney Smith
"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."
by Sydney Smith


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