Sydney Smith Quotes

It is always considered a piece of impertinence in England if a man of less than two or three thousand a year has any opinions at all upon important subjects.

That sign of old age extolling the past at the expense of the present.

Whatever you are by 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.

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

Men whose trade is rat-catching love to catch rats the bug destroyer seizes on his bug with delight and the suppressor is gratified by finding his vice.

The fact is that in order to do anything in this world worth doing, we must not stand shivering on the bank thinking of the cold and the danger, but jump in and scramble through as well as we can.

Going to marry her? Impossible! You mean a part of her; he could not marry her all himself. It would be a case, not of bigamy but trigamy; there is enough of her to furnish wives for the whole parish. One man marry her! - it is monstrous! You might people a colony with her; or give an assembly with her; or perhaps take your morning's walk round her, always provided there were frequent resting places, and you were in rude health. I once was rash enough to try walking round her before breakfast, but only got half way and gave it up exhausted. Or you might read the Riot Act and disperse her; in short, you might do anything but marry her!

No furniture is so charming as books.

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.

When you rise in the morning, form a resolution to make the day a happy one for a fellow creature.

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

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