A great deal of talent is lost to the world for want of a little courage. Every day sends to their graves obscure men whose timidity prevented them from making a first effort.
- Sydney Smith Quote

Among the smaller duties of life I hardly know any one more important than that of not praising where praise is not due.
- Sydney Smith Quote

Bishop Berkeley destroyed this world in one volume octavo; and nothing remained, after his time, but mind; which experienced a similar fate from the hand of Mr. Hume in 1737.
- Sydney Smith Quote

Correspondences are like small clothes before the invention of suspenders; it is impossible to keep them up.
- Sydney Smith Quote

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.
- Sydney Smith Quote

Find fault when you must find fault in private, and if possible sometime after the offense, rather than at the time.
- Sydney Smith Quote

Great men hallow a whole people, and lift up all who live in their time.
- Sydney Smith Quote

Heaven never helps the men who will not act.
- Sydney Smith Quote

I have, alas, only one illusion left, and that is the Archbishop of Canterbury.
- Sydney Smith Quote

I look upon Switzerland as an inferior sort of Scotland.
- Sydney Smith Quote

I never read a book before previewing it; it prejudices a man so.
- Sydney Smith Quote

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 Quote

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 Quote

It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do a little. Do what you can.
- Sydney Smith Quote

It resembles a pair of shears, so joined that they cannot be separated, often moving in opposite directions, yet always punishing anyone who comes between them.
- Sydney Smith Quote

Let the Dean and Canons lay their heads together and the thing will be done.
- Sydney Smith Quote

Life is to be fortified by many friendships. To love and to be loved is the greatest happiness of existence.
- Sydney Smith Quote

Madam, I have been looking for a person who disliked gravy all my life; let us swear eternal friendship.
- Sydney Smith Quote

Manners are like the shadows of virtues, they are the momentary display of those qualities which our fellow creatures love and respect.
- Sydney Smith Quote

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 Quote

Never give way to melancholy; resist it steadily, for the habit will encroach.
- Sydney Smith Quote

Never talk for half a minute without pausing and giving others a chance to join in.
- Sydney Smith Quote

No man can ever end with being superior who will not begin with being inferior.
- Sydney Smith Quote

Poverty us no disgrace to a man, but it is confoundedly inconvenient.
- Sydney Smith Quote

Solitude cherishes great virtues and destroys little ones.
- Sydney Smith Quote

The object of preaching is to constantly remind mankind of what they keep forgetting; not to supply the intellect, but to fortify the feebleness of human resolutions.
- Sydney Smith Quote

The thing about performance, even if it's only an illusion, is that it is a celebration of the fact that we do contain within ourselves infinite possibilities.
- Sydney Smith Quote

To do anything in this world worth doing, we must not stand back shivering and thinking of the cold and danger, but jump in, and scramble through as well as we can.
- Sydney Smith Quote

What a pity it is that we have no amusements in England but vice and religion!
- Sydney Smith Quote

What would life be without arithmetic, but a scene of horrors?
- Sydney Smith Quote