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
Pulpit discourses have insensibly dwindled from speaking to reading; a practice of itself sufficient to stifle every germ of eloquence.
—Sydney Smith
Never try to reason the prejudice out of a man. It was not reasoned into him, and cannot be reasoned out.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Prejudice
Living a good deal alone will, I believe, correct me of my faults; for a man can do without his own approbations in society, but he must make great exertions to gain it when he lives alone. Without it I am convinced solitude is not to be endured.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Solitude
I shall never apologize to you for egotism. — I think very few men in writing to their friends have enough of it.
—Sydney Smith
We know nothing of tomorrow; our business is to be good and happy today.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Tragedy, The Present, Future
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
All mankind are happier for having been happy, so that if you make them happy new, you make them happy twenty years hence by the memory of it.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Happiness
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
To love and be loved is the great happiness of existence.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Love
Never give way to melancholy; resist it steadily, for the habit will encroach.
—Sydney Smith
Never try to reason the prejudice out of a man. It wasn’t reasoned into him, and it cannot be reasoned out.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Wisdom
Whatever you are from 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.
—Sydney Smith
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
I have gout, asthma, and seven other maladies, but am otherwise very well.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Blessings
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
It is all nonsense about not being able to work without ale, and gin, and cider, and fermented liquors. Do lions and cart-horses drink ale?
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Alcohol
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
Topics: Virtue, Evil
If you wish to keep the mind clear and the body healthy, abstain from all fermented liquors.
—Sydney Smith
If idleness do not produce vice or malevolence, it commonly produces melancholy.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Idleness
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: Power, Knowledge
The writer does the most good who gives his reader the most knowledge and takes from him the least time.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Authors & Writing, Writing
Humanity is a duty made known and enjoined by revelation, and ever keeping pace with the progress of Christianity.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Humanity
There are many ways of being frivolous, only one way of being intellectually great; that is honest labor.
—Sydney Smith
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
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
Contempt is commonly taken by the young for an evidence of understanding; but it is neither difficult to acquire, nor meritorious when acquired. To discover the imperfections of others is penetration; to hate them for their faults is contempt. We may be clear sighted without being malevolent, and make use of the errors we discover, to learn caution, not to gratify satire.
—Sydney Smith
It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do a little. Do what you can.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Doing, Doing Your Best, Helping
I have the most perfect confidence in your indiscretion
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Confidence
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
For Gods sake, do not drag me into another war! I am worn down, and worn out, with crusading and defending Europe, and protecting mankind; I must think a little of myself.
—Sydney Smith
Praise is the best diet for us, after all.
—Sydney Smith
I have, alas, only one illusion left, and that is the Archbishop of Canterbury.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Religion
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: Work, Talents, Abilities
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: Revolution
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
The dearest things in the world are our neighbor’s eyes; they cost everybody more than anything else in housekeeping.
—Sydney Smith
The object of preaching, is, constantly to remind mankind of what they are constantly forgetting; not to supply the defects of human intelligence, but to fortify the feebleness of human resolutions; to recall mankind from the bypaths where they turn into that broad path of salvation which all know, but few tread.
—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
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