The Reverend Sydney Smith (1771–1845) was an English clergyman, essayist, and wit. He was one of the leading English preachers of his day and an advocate of parliamentary reform.
Smith was one of the foremost wits and essayists of the nineteenth century. He was renowned for his verbal humor and charm. He is the source of many phrases in common usage, e.g., “A square peg in a round hole” and “my idea of heaven is eating patés de foie to the sound of trumpets.”
Born in Woodford, Essex, Smith was educated at Winchester and Oxford’s New College, of which he became a Fellow. He was ordained in 1794, served at Netheravon in Wiltshire, and Edinburgh. In 1802, he started the quarterly magazine Edinburgh Review with other literary critics and journalists.
Smith lived six years in London, where he gained a reputation as a preacher, a lecturer on moral philosophy at the Royal Institution 1804–06 and a gifted speaker.
Smith is notable for his Letters of Peter Plymley (1807,) which defended Roman Catholic Emancipation. His writings also include 65 articles, collected in 1839 from the Edinburgh Review, Three Letters on the Ecclesiastical Commission (1837–39,) and review essays on political or religious subjects of the day.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Sydney Smith
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
It is always considered as 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.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Opinion
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
It is always right that a man should be able to render a reason for the faith that is within him.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Faith
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
It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do a little. Do what you can.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Helping, Doing Your Best, Doing
I never believe facts; Canning said nothing was so fallacious as facts, except figures.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Facts, Instincts
No furniture is so charming as books.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Books, Reading
Pulpit discourses have insensibly dwindled from speaking to reading; a practice of itself sufficient to stifle every germ of eloquence.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Preaching
Politeness is good nature regulated by good sense.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Politeness
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
Old friendships are destroyed by toasted cheese, and hard salted meat has led to suicide. Unpleasant feelings of the body produce correspondent sensations of the mind, and a great scene of wretchedness is sketched out by a morsel of indigestible and misguided food.
—Sydney Smith
There is one piece of advice, in a life of study, which I think no one will object to: and that is, every now and then to be completely idle, to do nothing at all.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Idleness
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
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
Virtue is so delightful, whenever it is perceived, that men have found it their interest to cultivate manners, which are, in fact, the appearances of certain virtues; and now we are come to love the sign better than the thing signified, and to prefer manners without virtue, to virtue without manners.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Virtue
The most curious offspring of shame is shyness.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Shame
The avaricious love of gain, which is so feelingly deplored, appears to us a principle which, in able hands, might be guided to the most salutary purposes. The object is to encourage the love of labor, which is best encouraged by the love of money.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Money
I never read a book before reviewing it; it prejudices a man so.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Criticism, Critics
When you rise in the morning, form a resolution to make the day a happy one for a fellow creature.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Compassion, Kindness
Say everything for vice which you can, magnify any pleasures as much as you please, but don’t believe you have any secret for sending on quicker the sluggish blood, and for refreshing the faded nerve.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Vice
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: Aging, Age
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
The taste for emotion may become a dangerous taste; we should be very cautious how we attempt to squeeze out of human life more ecstasy and paroxysm than it can well afford.
—Sydney Smith
The greatest curse that can be entailed on mankind is a state of war. All the atrocious crimes committed in years of peace, all that is spent in peace by the secret corruptions, or by the thoughtless extravagance of nations, are mere trifles compared with the gigantic evils which stalk over this world in a state of war. God is forgotten in war; every principle of Christianity is trampled upon.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: War
Errors to be dangerous must have a great deal of truth mingled with them.—It is only from this alliance that they can ever obtain an extensive circulation.—From pure extravagance, and genuine, unmingled falsehood, the world never has, and never can sustain any mischief.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Mistakes
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
Dislike of innovation proceeds sometimes from the disgust excited by false humanity, canting hypocrisy, and silly enthusiasm.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Innovation
There is but one method, and that is hard labor; and a man who will not pay that price for greatness had better at once dedicate himself to the pursuit of the fox, or to talk of bullocks, and glory in the goad.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Labor, Greatness
Every increase of knowledge may possibly render depravity more depraved, as well as it may increase the strength of virtue. It is in itself only power; and its value depends on its application.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Knowledge
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