If you wish to keep the mind clear and the body healthy, abstain from all fermented liquors.
—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.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Revolutionaries, Revolutions, Revolution
Humanity is a duty made known and enjoined by revelation, and ever keeping pace with the progress of Christianity.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Humanity
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
Topics: Religion, Churches
I have asked several men what passes in their minds when they are thinking, and I could never find any man who could think for two minutes together. Everybody has seemed to admit that it was a perpetual deviation from a particular path, and a perpetual return to it; which, imperfect as the operation is, is the only method in which we can operate with our minds to carry on any process of thought.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Thought
No enjoyment, however inconsiderable, is confined to the present moment. A man is the happier for life from having made once an agreeable tour, or lived for any length of time with pleasant people, or enjoyed any considerable interval of innocent pleasure.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Enjoyment
Most men want knowledge, not for itself, but for the superiority which knowledge confers; and the means they employ to secure this superiority are as wrong as the ultimate object, for no man can ever end with being superior, who will not begin with being inferior.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Knowledge, Power
When I hear any man talk of an unalterable law, the only effect it produces on me is to convince me that he is an unalterable fool.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Law
We know nothing of tomorrow; our business is to be good and happy today.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: The Present, Future, Tragedy
Solitude cherishes great virtues and destroys little ones.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Solitude
I never read a book before reviewing it; it prejudices a man so.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Critics, Criticism
Do not assume that because I am frivolous I am shallow; I don’t assume that because you are grave you are profound.
—Sydney Smith
Hope is the belief, more or less strong, that joy will come desire is the wish it may come.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Belief, Hope, Faith
Brevity to writing is what charity is to all other virtues; righteousness is nothing without the one, nor authorship without the other.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Brevity
Marriage resembles a pair of shears, so joined that they cannot be separated, often moving in opposite directions, yet always punishing anyone who comes in between them.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Marriage
Politeness is good nature regulated by good sense.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Politeness
Genuine and innocent wit is surely the flavor of the mind. Man could not direct his way by plain reason, and support his life by tasteless food; but God has given us wit, and flavor, and brightness, and laughter, and perfumes, to enliven the days of man’s pilgrimage, and to charm his pained steps over the burning marl.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Wit, Laughter
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
Topics: Brevity
The only way to make the mass of mankind see the beauty of justice, is by showing them, in pretty plain terms, the consequence of injustice.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Justice
It is the calling of great men, not so much to preach new truths, as to rescue from oblivion those old truths which it is our wisdom to remember and our weakness to forget.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Memory, Truth
Children are excellent physiognomists, and soon discover their real friends.—Luttrell calls them all lunatics, and so in fact they are.—What is childhood but a series of happy delusions?
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Children
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.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Abilities, Talents, Work
Pulpit discourses have insensibly dwindled from speaking to reading; a practice of itself sufficient to stifle every germ of eloquence.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Preaching
Correspondences are like small clothes before the invention of suspenders; it is impossible to keep them up.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Letters
Great men hallow a whole people, and lift up all who live in their time.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Greatness & Great Things, Greatness
Let every man be occupied, and occupied in the highest employment of which his nature is capable, and die with the consciousness that he has done his best.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Work
Pride is not the heritage of man; humility should dwell with frailty, and atone for ignorance, error, and imperfection.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Pride
To love and be loved is the great happiness of existence.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Love
Manners are the shadows of virtues; the momentary display of those qualities which our fellow creatures love and respect. If we strive to become, then, what we strive to appear, manners may often be rendered useful guides to the performance of our duties.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Manners
How nature delights and amuses us by varying even the character of insects; the ill-nature of the wasp, the sluggishness of the drone, the volatility of the butterfly, the slyness of the bug!
—Sydney Smith
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Richard Hooker English Theologian, Political Theorist
- Beilby Porteus Bishop of London
- Jeremy Collier English Anglican Clergyman
- John Wilkins British Clergyman, Scholar
- William Ralph Inge English Anglican Clergyman
- Frances Ridley Havergal English Anglican Poet
- William Cowper English Anglican Poet
- William Croswell Doane American Bishop
- Daniel Defoe English Writer
- Thomas de Quincey English Essayist, Critic
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