Sydney Smith Quotes

Manners are the shadows of virtues; the momentary display of those qualities which our fellow creatures love, and respect.

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.

A great deal of talent is lost to the world for want of a little courage

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

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.

No furniture is so charming as books.

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

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

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.

Many in this world run after felicity like an absent man hunting for his hat, while all the time it is on his head or in his hand.

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

Magnificent spectacle of human happiness.

Married couples resemble a pair of scissors,
often moving in opposite directions,
yet punishing anyone who gets in between them

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

If you could be alarmed into the semblance of modesty, you would charm everybody; but remember my joke against you about the Moon and the Solar System;—"Damn the solar system! bad light — planets too distant — pestered with comets — feeble contriviance; — could make a better with great ease."