Sydney Smith Quotes

Whatever you are by nature, keep to it; never desert your line of talent. Be what nature intended you for, and you will succeed.

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

Never try to reason the prejudice out of a man. It was not reasoned into him, and cannot be reasoned out.

we know nothing of tomorrow, our business is to be good and happy today

The main question to a novel is -- did it amuse? were you surprised at dinner coming so soon? did you mistake eleven for ten? were you too late to dress? and did you sit up beyond the usual hour? If a novel produces these effects, it is good; if it does not -- story, language, love, scandal itself cannot save it. It is only meant to please; and it must do that or it does nothing.

Resolve to make at least one person happy every day, and then in ten years you may have made three thousand, six hundred and fifty persons happy, or brightened a small town by your contribution to the fund of general enjoyment.

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; and who, if they could only have been induced to begin, would in all probability have gone great lengths in the career of fame.

Thank God for tea! What would the world do without tea! How did it exist? I am glad I was not born before tea.

If you want to improve your understanding, drink coffee.

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

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

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.

No furniture is so charming as books.

A man who wishes to make his way in life could do no better than go through the world with a boiling tea-kettle in his hand.

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

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

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.

Human beings cling to their delicious tyrannies and to their exquisite nonsense, till death stares them in the face.

It is no more necessary that a man should remember the different dinners and suppers which have made him healthy, than the different books which have made him wise. Let us see the results of good food in a strong body, and the results of great reading in a full and powerful mind.

Politeness is good nature regulated by good sense.

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

Heat, ma am! 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.

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

Hope is the belief, more or less strong, that joy will come.

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