Sydney Smith
Sydney Smith
Sydney Smithwas an English wit, writer and Anglican cleric...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionClergyman
Date of Birth3 June 1771
life children mistake
Lucy, dear child, mind your arithmetic. You know in the first sum of yours I ever saw there was a mistake. You had carried two (as a cab is licensed to do), and you ought, dear Lucy, to have carried but one. Is this a trifle? What would life be without arithmetic, but a scene of horrors.
children men water
He who drinks a tumbler of London water has literally in his stomach more animated beings than there are men, women, and children on the face of the globe.
funny knives two
The two women exchanged the type of glance women use when there is no knife handy.
men poverty poor
Poverty is no disgrace to a man, but it is confoundedly inconvenient.
greatness men people
Great men hallow a whole people, and lift up all who live in their time.
morning resolution form
When you rise in the morning, form a resolution to make the day a happy one for a fellow creature.
army politeness good-nature
Politeness is good nature regulated by good sense.
new-year years three
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.
ignorance ignorant-masses numbers
Have the courage to be ignorant of a great number of things, in order to avoid the calamity of being ignorant of everything.
wise strong powerful
It is no more necessary that a man should remember the different dinners and suppers which have made him healthy, than the different books which have made him wise. Let us see the results of good food in a strong body, and the results of great reading in a full and powerful mind.
reading book men
Some men have only one book in them, others a library.
sarcastic land earth
Scotland: That garret of the earth - that knuckle-end of England - that land of Calvin, oatcakes, and sulfur.
hate science ease
[T]he 47th proposition in Euclid might now be voted down with as much ease as any proposition in politics; and therefore if Lord Hawkesbury hates the abstract truths of science as much as he hates concrete truth in human affairs, now is his time for getting rid of the multiplication table, and passing a vote of censure upon the pretensions of the hypotenuse.
believe facts canning
Oh, don't tell me of facts, I never believe facts; you know, [George] Canning said nothing was so fallacious as facts, except figures.