Sydney Smith Quotes

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Sydney Smith

Profession : Clergyman

Birth : June 3, 1771

What a pity it is that we have no amusements in England but vice and religion!

Sydney Smith

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

Sydney Smith

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

Sydney Smith

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

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.

Sydney Smith

Science is his forte, and omniscience his foible.

Sydney Smith

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

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

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

Sydney Smith

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

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

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

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

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.

Sydney Smith

Let the Dean and Canons lay their heads together and the thing will be done.

Sydney Smith

Solitude cherishes great virtues and destroys little ones.

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.

Sydney Smith