01c. 1807 ADAll mankind are happier for having been happy, so that, if you make them happy now, you make them happy twenty years hence by the memory of it.Sydney Smith / quote ↗
02c. 1807 ADHave the courage to be ignorant of a great number of things, in order to avoid the calamity of being ignorant of everything.Sydney Smith / quote ↗
03c. 1807 ADOld friendships are destroyed by toasted cheese, and hard salted meat has led to suicide. Unpleasant feelings of the body produce correspondent sensations in the mind, and a great scene of wretchedness is sketched out by a morsel of indigestible and misguided food.Sydney Smith / quote ↗
04c. 1807 ADDislike of innovation proceeds sometimes from the disgust excited by false humanity, canting hypocrisy, and silly enthusiasm.Sydney Smith / quote ↗
05c. 1807 ADYes! you may find people ready enough to do the Samaritan without the oil and twopence.Sydney Smith / quote ↗
06c. 1807 ADThe truth is, that most men want knowledge, not for itself, but for the superiority which knowledge confers; and the means they employ to secure this superiority are as wrong as the ultimate object, for no man can ever end with being superior who will not begin with being inferior.Sydney Smith / quote ↗
07c. 1807 ADLearn from the earliest days to inure your principles against the perils of ridicule: you can no more exercise your reason, if you live in the constant dread of laughter, than you can enjoy your life if you are in the constant terror of death.Sydney Smith / quote ↗
08c. 1807 ADThe avaricious love of gain, which is so feelingly deplored, appears to us a principle which, in able hands, might be guided to the most salutary purposes. The object is to encourage the love of labor, which is best encouraged by the love of money.Sydney Smith / quote ↗
09c. 1807 ADAll musical people seem to be happy; it is the engrossing pursuit; almost the only innocent and unpunished passion.Sydney Smith / quote ↗
10c. 1807 ADThere is nothing of which Nature has been more bountiful than poets. They swarm like the spawn of cod-fish, with a vicious fecundity, that invites and requires destruction. To publish verses is become a sort of evidence that a man wants sense; which is repelled not by writing good verses, but by writing excellent verses.Sydney Smith / quote ↗
11c. 1807 ADI have very little to say about puns; they are in very bad repute, and so they ought to be. The wit of language is so miserably inferior to the wit of ideas, that it is very deservedly driven out of good company. Sometimes, indeed, a pun makes its appearance which seems for a moment to redeem its species; but we must not be deceived by them: it is a radically bad race of wit.Sydney Smith / quote ↗
12c. 1807 ADWe are told, "Let not the sun go down on your wrath." This, of course, is best; but, as it generally does, I would add, never act or write till it has done so. This rule has saved me from many an act of folly. It is wonderful what a different view we take of the same event four-and-twenty hours after it has happened.Sydney Smith / quote ↗
13c. 1807 ADI endeavor in vain to give my parishioners more cheerful ideas of religion; to teach them that God is not a jealous, childish, merciless tyrant; that He is best served by a regular tenor of good actions, not by bad singing, ill-composed prayers, and eternal apprehensions. But the luxury of false religion is to be unhappy!Sydney Smith / quote ↗
14c. 1807 ADRepose is agreeable to the human mind; and decision is repose. A man has made up his opinions; he does not choose to be disturbed; and he is much more thankful to the man who confirms him in his errors, and leaves him alone, than he is to the man who refutes him, or who instructs him at the expense of his tranquillity.Sydney Smith / quote ↗
15c. 1807 ADReputation is one of the prizes for which men contend: it is, as Mr. Burke calls it, "the cheap defence and ornament of nations, and the nurse of manly exertions;" it produces more labor and more talent then twice the wealth of a country could ever rear up. It is the coin of genius; and it is the imperious duty of every man to bestow it with the most scrupulous justice and the wisest economy.Sydney Smith / quote ↗
16c. 1807 ADOther rules vary; this is the only one you will find without exception: That in this world the salary or reward is always in the inverse ratio of the duties performed.Sydney Smith / quote ↗
17c. 1807 ADA true sarcasm is like a sword-stick—it appears, at first sight, to be much more innocent than it really is, till, all of a sudden, there leaps something out of it—sharp and deadly and incisive—which makes you tremble and recoil.Sydney Smith / quote ↗
18c. 1807 ADI have asked several men what passes in their minds when they are thinking, and I could never find any man who could think for two minutes together. Everybody has seemed to admit that it was a perpetual deviation from a particular path, and a perpetual return to it; which, imperfect as the operation is, is the only method in which we can operate with our minds to carry on any process of thought.Sydney Smith / quote ↗
19c. 1807 ADWhat I object to Scotch philosophers in general is, that they reason upon man as they would upon a divinity; they pursue truth without caring if it be useful truth.Sydney Smith / quote ↗
21c. 1807 ADIf idleness do not produce vice or malevolence, it commonly produces melancholy.Sydney Smith / quote ↗
22c. 1807 ADThe world is like a board with holes in it, and the square men have got into the round holes.Sydney Smith / quote ↗
23c. 1807 ADA wise man struggling with adversity is said by some heathen writer to be a spectacle on which the gods might look down with pleasure.Sydney Smith / quote ↗
