1771-1845, British Writer, Clergyman
A comfortable house is a great source of happiness. It ranks immediately after health and a good conscience.
Sydney Smith – [Home]
A great deal of talent is lost in the world for want of courage.
Sydney Smith – [Courage]
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.
Sydney Smith – [Revolutions and Revolutionaries]
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.
Sydney Smith – [Theater]
Among the smaller duties of life I hardly know any one more important than that of not praising where praise is not due.
Sydney Smith – [Praise]
Avoid shame but do not seek glory –nothing so expensive as glory.
Sydney Smith – [Glory]
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 – [Philosophers and Philosophy]
Correspondences are like small clothes before the invention of suspenders; it is impossible to keep them up.
Sydney Smith – [Letters]
Find fault when you must find fault in private, and if possible sometime after the offense, rather than at the time.
Sydney Smith – [Correction]
Great men hallow a whole people, and lift up all who live in their time.
Sydney Smith – [Greatness]
Have the courage to be ignorant of a great number of things, in order to avoid the calamity of being ignorant of everything.
Sydney Smith – [Ignorance]
He had occasional flashes of silence that made his conversation perfectly delightful.
Sydney Smith – [Silence]
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.
Sydney Smith – [Weather]
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.
Sydney Smith – [Silence]
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 – [Churches]
I have, alas, only one illusion left, and that is the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Sydney Smith – [Churches]
I never read a book before reviewing it; it prejudices a man so.
Sydney Smith – [Critics and Criticism]
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.
Sydney Smith – [Age and Aging]
It is always right that a man should be able to render a reason for the faith that is within him.
Sydney Smith – [Faith]
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 – [Wickedness]