Sydney Smith Quotes
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What would life be without arithmetic, but a scene of horrors?
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Avoid shame, but do not seek glory; nothing so expensive as glory.
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The main question to a novel is -- did it amuse? were you surprised at dinner coming so soon? did you mistake eleven for ten? were you too late to dress? and did you sit up beyond the usual hour? If a novel produces these effects, it is good; if it does not -- story, language, love, scandal itself cannot save it. It is only meant to please; and it must do that or it does nothing.
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People who love only once in their lives are shallow people. What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity, I call either the lethargy of custom, or their lack of imagination
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The longer I live, the more I am convinced that the apothecary is of more importance than Seneca; and that half the unhappiness in the world proceeds from little stoppages; from a duct choked up, from food pressing in the wrong place, from a vexed duodenum, or an agitated pylorus.
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What two ideas are more inseparable than beer and Britannia?
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Oh, don't tell me of facts, I never believe facts; you know, [George] Canning said nothing was so fallacious as facts, except figures.
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Hope is the belief, more or less strong, that joy will come.
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I always fear that creation will expire before teatime.
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Lucy, dear child, mind your arithmetic. You know in the first sum of yours I ever saw there was a mistake. You had carried two (as a cab is licensed to do), and you ought, dear Lucy, to have carried but one. Is this a trifle? What would life be without arithmetic, but a scene of horrors.
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Politeness is good nature regulated by good sense.
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Scotland: That garret of the earth - that knuckle-end of England - that land of Calvin, oatcakes, and sulfur.
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Poverty is no disgrace to a man, but it is confoundedly inconvenient.
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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
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Resolve to make at least one person happy every day, and then in ten years you may have made three thousand, six hundred and fifty persons happy, or brightened a small town by your contribution to the fund of general enjoyment.
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Find fault, when you must find fault, in private, if possible; and some time after the offense, rather than at the time.
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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.
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No man can ever end with being superior who will not begin with being inferior.
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Human beings cling to their delicious tyrannies and to their exquisite nonsense, till death stares them in the face.
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How can a bishop marry? How can he flirt? The most he can say is "I will see you in the vestry after service."
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Let the Dean and Canons lay their heads together and the thing will be done.
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Marriage 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.
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It is no more necessary that a man should remember the different dinners and suppers which have made him healthy, than the different books which have made him wise. Let us see the results of good food in a strong body, and the results of great reading in a full and powerful mind.
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Never give way to melancholy; resist it steadily, for the habit will encroach.
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Great men hallow a whole people, and lift up all who live in their time.
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Life is to be fortified by many friendships. To love and to be loved is the greatest happiness of existence.
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Solitude cherishes great virtues and destroys little ones.
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He not only overflowed with learning, but stood in the slop.
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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.
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If you want to improve your understanding, drink coffee.
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