Sydney Smith Quotes

Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.

No furniture is so charming as books.

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

Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.

If you want to improve your understanding, drink coffee.

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

I never read a book before reviewing it: it prejudices a man so.

The fact is that in order to do anything in this world worth doing, we must not stand shivering on the bank thinking of the cold and the danger, but jump in and scramble through as well as we can.

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

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

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

I always fear that creation will expire before teatime.

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.

As you sit on the hillside, or lie prone under the trees of the forest, or sprawl wet-legged by a mountain stream, the great door, that does not look like a door, opens.

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.

No furniture is so charming as books, even if you never open them or read a single word.

Life is to be fortified by many friendships. To love, and to be loved, is the greatest happiness of existence.

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

Have the courage to be ignorant of a great number of things, in order to avoid the calamity of being ignorant of everything.

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

The Reverend Sydney Smith, though a man of the cloth, caught the spirit of the age by declining to say grace. 'With the ravenous orgasm upon you, it seems impertinent to interpose a religious sentiment,' he explained. 'It is a confusion of purpose to mutter out praises from a mouth that waters.

Partial Quote; “A great deal of talent is lost to the world for want of a little courage”. Full Quote; “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”.

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

Take short views, Hope for the best, and Trust in God.

Mankind are always happy for having happiness. So if you make them happy now, you make them happy twenty years from now by the memory of it.

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

Live always in the best company when you read.

I am glad you like what I said of Mrs. Elizabeth Fry (prison and mental hospital reformer). She is very unpopular with the clergy; examples of living, active virtue disturb our repose and give one to distressing comparisons; we long to burn her alive.

Never give way to melancholy: nothing encroaches more; I fight against it vigorously. One great remedy is, to take short views of life. Are you happy now? Are you likely to remain so till this evening? or next week? or next year? Then why destroy present happiness by a distant misery, which may never come at all, or you may never live to see it? For every substantial grief has twenty shadows, and most of them shadows of your own making.

...Nature becomes your teacher, and from her you will learn what is beautiful and who you are and what is your special quest in life and whither you should go...You live on manna vouchsafed to you daily, miraculously. You stretch out arms for hidden gifts, you year toward the moonbeams and the stars, you listen with new ears to bird's songs and the murmurs of trees and streams....From day to day you keep your log, your day-book of the soul, and you may think at first that it is a mere record of travel and of facts; but something else will be entering into it, poetry, the new poetry of your life, and it will be evident to a seeing eye that you are gradually becoming an artist in life, you are learning the gentle art of tramping, and it is giving you an artist's joy in creation.