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
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
Topics: Silence
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
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
We are told, “Let not the sun go down in your wrath,” but I would add, never act or write till it has done so. This rule has saved me from many an act of folly. It is wonderful what a different view we take of the same event four-and-twenty hours after it has happened.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Reflection
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
Duelling, though barbarous in civilized, is a highly civilizing institution among barbarous people; and when compared to assassination is a prodigious victory gained over human passions.
—Sydney Smith
I once gave a lady two-and-twenty receipts against melancholy; one was a bright fire; another, to remember all the pleasant things said to her; another, to keep a box of sugarplums on the chimney-piece and a kettle simmering on the hob. I thought this mere trifling at the moment, but have in after life discovered how true it is that these little pleasures often banish melancholy better than higher and more exalted objects; and that no means ought to be thought too trifling which can oppose it either in ourselves or in others.
—Sydney Smith
Great men hallow a whole people, and lift up all who live in their time.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Greatness, Greatness & Great Things
If you wish to keep the mind clear and the body healthy, abstain from all fermented liquors.
—Sydney Smith
Avoid shame but do not seek glory—nothing so expensive as glory.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Shame, Glory
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
Topics: Age, Aging
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
Topics: Weather
I have gout, asthma, and seven other maladies, but am otherwise very well.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Blessings
There are many ways of being frivolous, only one way of being intellectually great; that is honest labor.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Labor
That sign of old age, extolling the past at the expense of the present.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Reflection, Old Age
Never talk for half a minute without pausing and giving others a chance to join in.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Conversation
I have come to the conclusion that mankind consume too much food.
—Sydney Smith
Pride is not the heritage of man; humility should dwell with frailty, and atone for ignorance, error, and imperfection.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Pride
Why destroy present happiness by a distant misery which may never come at all, or you may never live to see it?—Every substantial grief has twenty shadows, and most of them shadows of your own making.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Grief
Politeness is good nature regulated by good sense.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Politeness
The haunts of happiness are varied, but I have more often found her among little children, home firesides, and country houses than anywhere else.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Happiness
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
Topics: Theater
There is the same difference between the tongues of some, as between the hour and the minute hand; one goes ten times as fast, and the other signifies ten times as much.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Talking
Soup and fish explain half the emotions of human life
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Eating
Live always in the best company when you read.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Reading
The writer does the most good who gives his reader the most knowledge and takes from him the least time.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Writing, Authors & Writing
Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Disappointment, Regret, Remorse
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
Education gives fecundity of thought, copiousness of illustration, quickness, vigor, fancy, words, images, and illustrations; it decorates every common thing, and gives the power of trifling without being undignified and absurd.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Education
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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