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
Madam, I have been looking for a person who disliked gravy all my life; let us swear eternal friendship.
—Sydney Smith
Never talk for half a minute without pausing and giving others a chance to join in.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Conversation
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
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
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
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, Abilities, Talents
Repose is agreeable to the human mind; and decision is repose. A man has made up his opinions; he does not choose to be disturbed; and he ismuch more thankful to the man who confirms him in his errors, and leaves him alone, than he is to the man who refutes him, or who instructs him at the expense of his tranquility.
—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
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
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
What would life be without arithmetic, but a scene of horrors?
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Mathematics
Hope is the belief, more or less strong, that joy will come desire is the wish it may come.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Faith, Belief, Hope
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
He has spent all his life in letting down empty buckets into empty wells; and he is frittering away his age in trying to draw them up again.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Carpe-diem
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
Topics: Preaching, Evangelism
Poverty is no disgrace to a man, but it is confoundedly inconvenient.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Poverty
Soup and fish explain half the emotions of human life
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Eating
What two ideas are more inseparable than beer and Britannia?
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Britain
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
Humanity is a duty made known and enjoined by revelation, and ever keeping pace with the progress of Christianity.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Humanity
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: Greatness, Labor
I am convinced digestion is the great secret of life.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Secrets
Avoid shame but do not seek glory—nothing so expensive as glory.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Shame, Glory
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
Never try to reason the prejudice out of a man. It was not reasoned into him, and cannot be reasoned out.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Reason, Prejudice
Politeness is good nature regulated by good sense.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Politeness
Among the smaller duties of life, I hardly know any one more important than that of not praising where praise is not due. Reputation is one of the prizes for which men contend: it produces more labor and more talent than twice the wealth of a country could ever rear up. It is the coin of genius, and it is the imperious duty of every man to bestow it with the most scrupulous justice and the wisest economy.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Praise
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
Solitude cherishes great virtues and destroys little ones.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Solitude
We know nothing of tomorrow; our business is to be good and happy today.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Future, The Present, Tragedy
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
Have the courage to be ignorant of a great number of things, in order to avoid the calamity of being ignorant of everything.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Ignorance
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
Praise is the best diet for us, after all.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Diet
A true sarcasm is like a swordstick—it appears, at first sight, to be much more innocent than it really is, till, all of a sudden, there leaps something out of it—sharp and deadly and incisive—which makes you tremble and recoil.
—Sydney Smith
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
That sign of old age, extolling the past at the expense of the present.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Old Age, Reflection
Learn from the earliest days to insure your principles against the perils of ridicule; you can no more exercise your reason if you live in the constant dread of laughter, than you can enjoy your life if you are in the constant terror of death.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Vision
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
Take short views, hope for the best, and trust in God.
—Sydney Smith
Topics: Time Management, Value of Time
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