Quotes from 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.

That sign of old age, extolling the past at the expense of the present.

Soup and fish explain half the emotions of human life.

Ah, you flavor everything; you are the vanilla of society.

That knuckle-end of England—that land of Calvin, oatcakes, and sulphur.

If you want to improve your understanding, drink coffee. Sir James Mackintosh used to say, he believed the difference between one man and another was produced by the quantity of coffee he drank.

Poverty is no disgrace to a man, but it is confoundedly inconvenient.

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.

Avoid shame, but do not seek glory—nothing so expensive as glory.

Serenely full, the epicure would say,Fate cannot harm me, I have dined today.

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

Science is his forte, and omniscience his foible.

Preaching has become a byword for long and dull conversation of any kind; and whoever wishes to imply, in any piece of writing, the absence of everything agreeable and inviting, calls it a sermon.

A comfortable house is a great source of happiness. It ranks immediately after health and a good conscience.

Not body enough to cover his mind decently with; his intellect is improperly exposed.

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.

If you choose to represent the various parts in life by holes upon a table, of different shapes—some circular, some triangular, some square, some oblong—and the persons acting these parts by bits of wood of similar shapes, we shall generally find that the triangular person has got into the square hole, the oblong into the triangular, and a square person has squeezed himself into the round hole.

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

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.

I have no relish for the country; it is a kind of healthy grave.

Daniel Webster struck me much like a steam engine in trousers.

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

The observances of the church concerning feasts and fasts are tolerably well-kept, since the rich keep the feasts and the poor keep the fasts.

In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book, or goes to an American play, or looks at an American picture or statue?… Under which of the old tyrannical governments of Europe is every sixth man a slave, whom his fellow-creatures may buy, and sell, and torture?