Sydney Smith
A comfortable house is a great source of happiness. It ranks immediately after health and a good conscience.Collection: Happiness
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.Collection: Marriage
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.Collection: Courage
Whatever you are by nature, keep to it; never desert your line of talent. Be what nature intended you for, and you will succeed.Collection: Nature
Have the courage to be ignorant of a great number of things, in order to avoid the calamity of being ignorant of everything.Collection: Courage
Madam, I have been looking for a person who disliked gravy all my life; let us swear eternal friendship.Collection: Friendship
Life is to be fortified by many friendships. To love and to be loved is the greatest happiness of existence.Collection: Happiness
It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do little - do what you can.
Poverty is no disgrace to a man, but it is confoundedly inconvenient.
What a pity it is that we have no amusements in England but vice and religion!
Never talk for half a minute without pausing and giving others a chance to join in.
Never give way to melancholy; resist it steadily, for the habit will encroach.
What you don't know would make a great book.
Great men hallow a whole people, and lift up all who live in their time.
Heaven never helps the men who will not act.
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.
I never read a book before previewing it; it prejudices a man so.
I look upon Switzerland as an inferior sort of Scotland.
Let the Dean and Canons lay their heads together and the thing will be done.
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.
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.
Solitude cherishes great virtues and destroys little ones.
To business that we love we rise bedtime, and go to't with delight.
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.
Correspondences are like small clothes before the invention of suspenders; it is impossible to keep them up.
Among the smaller duties of life I hardly know any one more important than that of not praising where praise is not due.
Live always in the best company when you read.
I have, alas, only one illusion left, and that is the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Manners are like the shadows of virtues, they are the momentary display of those qualities which our fellow creatures love and respect.
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.
What would life be without arithmetic, but a scene of horrors?
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.
No man can ever end with being superior who will not begin with being inferior.
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.
As the French say, there are three sexes - men, women, and clergymen.
Science is his forte, and omniscience his foible.
Find fault when you must find fault in private, and if possible sometime after the offense, rather than at the time.
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.
Never try to reason the prejudice out of a man. It was not reasoned into him, and cannot be reasoned out.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Mistake
we know nothing of tomorrow, our business is to be good and happy todayCollection: Happiness
Thank God for tea! What would the world do without tea! How did it exist? I am glad I was not born before tea.Collection: Tea
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.Collection: Confidence
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.Collection: New Year
If you want to improve your understanding, drink coffee.Collection: Coffee
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.Collection: Men
Find fault, when you must find fault, in private, if possible; and some time after the offense, rather than at the time.Collection: Faults
No furniture is so charming as books.Collection: Book
Human beings cling to their delicious tyrannies and to their exquisite nonsense, till death stares them in the face.Collection: Faces
Avoid shame, but do not seek glory; nothing so expensive as glory.Collection: Reputation