88+ Sydney Smith Quotes On Education, Sports And Culture

Sydney Smith (1771-1845) was an English Clergyman and a leading figure of the English Enlightenment. He was known for his wit and his contributions to the Whig party. He is also remembered for his work with the Edinburgh Review, a literary and political periodical he co-founded in 1802. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Sydney Smith on education, sports, culture.

Top 10 Sydney Smith Quotes

1. Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goals.
2. It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do little — do what you can.
3. Whatever you are by nature, keep to it; never desert your line of talent. Be what nature intended you for, and you will succeed.
4. If you want to improve your understanding, drink coffee.
5. Life is to be fortified by many friendships. To love and to be loved is the greatest happiness of existence.
6. To love and be loved is the great happiness of existence.
7. Madam, I have been looking for a person who disliked gravy all my life; let us swear eternal friendship.
8. 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.
9. A comfortable house is a great source of happiness. It ranks immediately after health and a good conscience.
10. Never try to reason the prejudice out of a man. It was not reasoned into him, and cannot be reasoned out.

Sydney Smith Short Quotes

• You find people ready enough to do the Samaritan, without the oil and twopence.
• It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do a little. Do what you can.
• No furniture is so charming as books.
• I look upon Switzerland as an inferior sort of Scotland.
• I always fear that creation will expire before teatime.
• No man can ever end with being superior who will not begin with being inferior.
• Poverty is no disgrace to a man, but it is confoundedly inconvenient.
• Live always in the best company when you read.
• Never talk for half a minute without pausing and giving others a chance to join in.
• Politeness is good nature regulated by good sense.

Sydney Smith Quotes About Life

A man who wishes to make his way in life could do no better than go through the world with a boiling tea-kettle in his hand. — Sydney Smith

If I were to begin life again, I would devote it to music. It is the only cheap and unpunished rapture upon earth. — Sydney Smith

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. — Sydney Smith

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

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

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. — Sydney Smith

I am convinced digestion is the great secret of life. — Sydney Smith

All this class of pleasures inspires me with the same nausea as I feel at the sight of rich plum-cake or sweetmeats; I prefer the driest bread of common life. — Sydney Smith

Sydney Smith Quotes About World

Thank God for tea! What would the world do without tea! How did it exist? I am glad I was not born before tea. — Sydney Smith

A great deal of talent is lost to the world for want of a little courage. — Sydney Smith

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

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

Do not try to push your way through to the front ranks of your profession; do not run after distinctions and rewards; but do your utmost to find an entry into the world of beauty. — Sydney Smith

Sydney Smith Quotes About Love

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 — Sydney Smith

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

To business that we love we rise bedtime, and go to't with delight. — Sydney Smith

Sydney Smith Quotes About Marriage

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. — Sydney Smith

Married couples resemble a pair of scissors, often moving in opposite directions, yet punishing anyone who gets in between them. — Sydney Smith

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

Sydney Smith Quotes About Happiness

we know nothing of tomorrow, our business is to be good and happy today — Sydney Smith

When you rise in the morning, form a resolution to make the day a happy one for a fellow creature. — Sydney Smith

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. — Sydney Smith

Sydney Smith Famous Quotes And Sayings

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

The writer does the most good who gives his reader the most knowledge and takes from him the least time. — Sydney Smith

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

He who drinks a tumbler of London water has literally in his stomach more animated beings than there are men, women, and children on the face of the globe. — Sydney Smith

Human beings cling to their delicious tyrannies and to their exquisite nonsense, till death stares them in the face. — Sydney Smith

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

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

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

He had occasional flashes of silence that made his conversation perfectly delightful. — Sydney Smith

Avoid shame but do not seek glory --nothing so expensive as glory. — Sydney Smith

Heat, ma am! It was so dreadful here that I found there was nothing left for it but to take off my flesh and sit in my bones. — Sydney Smith

It is always right that a man should be able to render a reason for the faith that is within him. — Sydney Smith

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

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

Some men have only one book in them, others a library. — Sydney Smith

Solitude cherishes great virtues and destroys little ones. — Sydney Smith

I never read a book before reviewing it; it prejudices a man so. — Sydney Smith

Take short views, hope for the best and trust in God. — Sydney Smith

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

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. — Sydney Smith

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

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

Hope is the belief, more or less strong, that joy will come. — Sydney Smith

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

He not only overflowed with learning, but stood in the slop. — Sydney Smith

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

[T]he 47th proposition in Euclid might now be voted down with as much ease as any proposition in politics; and therefore if Lord Hawkesbury hates the abstract truths of science as much as he hates concrete truth in human affairs, now is his time for getting rid of the multiplication table, and passing a vote of censure upon the pretensions of the hypotenuse. — Sydney Smith

As the French say, there are three sexes - men, women, and clergymen. — Sydney Smith

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

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

I never read a book before previewing it; it prejudices a man so. — 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 two ideas are more inseparable than beer and Britannia? — Sydney Smith

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

A great deal of talent is lost to the world for the want of a little courage. Every day sends to their graves a number of obscure men who have only remained obscure because their timidity has prevented them from making a first effort; and who, if they could only have been induced to begin, would in all probability have gone great lengths in the career of fame. — Sydney Smith

What you don't know would make a great book. — Sydney Smith

Oh, don't tell me of facts -- I never believe facts: you know Canning said nothing was so fallacious as facts, except figures. — Sydney Smith

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

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

The two women exchanged the type of glance women use when there is no knife handy. — Sydney Smith

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

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

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

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

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. — Sydney Smith

Scotland: That garret of the earth - that knuckle-end of England - that land of Calvin, oatcakes, and sulfur. — Sydney Smith

Life Lessons by Sydney Smith

1. Sydney Smith taught that life should be lived with a sense of humor and an appreciation for the small moments. He believed that it was important to take joy in the simple things, and to not take life too seriously.
2. He also believed that it was important to be kind and generous to others, and to always strive to be the best version of yourself.
3. Finally, he taught that it was important to be humble and to recognize that everyone has something to offer, regardless of their background or station in life.