Quotes from Sydney Smith

He has returned from Italy a greater bore than ever; he bores on architecture, painting, statuary and music.

He (Macaulay) has occasional flashes of silence that make his conversation perfectly delightful.

You never say a word of yourself, dear Lady Grey. You have that dreadful sin of anti-egotism.

I have gout, asthma, and seven other maladies, but am otherwise very well.

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

I never believe facts; Canning said nothing was so fallacious as facts, except figures.

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

It is always considered 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.

Politeness is good nature regulated by good sense.

Among the smaller duties in life, I hardly know any one more important than that of not praising when praise is not due.

Heat, madam! It was so dreadful that I found there was nothing for it but to take off my flesh and sit in my bones.

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.

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

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.

Whatever you are by 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.

Never desert your own line of talent. Be what nature intended you for, and you will succeed.

What two ideas are more inseparable than beer and Britannia?

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.

Never try to reason the prejudice out of a man. It was not reasoned into him, and cannot be reasoned out.

If idleness do not produce vice or malevolence, it commonly produces melancholy.

I have the most perfect confidence in your indiscretion

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

The most curious offspring of shame is shyness.

Praise is the best diet for us, after all.