"Manners are the shadows of virtues; the momentary display of those qualities which our fellow creatures love, and respect."
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Quote collection
Sydney Smith quotes (page 2 of 3)
56 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Poverty is no disgrace to a man, but it is confoundedly inconvenient."
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"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."
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"When you rise in the morning, form a resolution to make the day a happy one for a fellow creature."
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"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"
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"Have the courage to be ignorant of a great number of things, in order to avoid the calamity of being ignorant of everything."
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"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."
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"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."
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"Human beings cling to their delicious tyrannies and to their exquisite nonsense, till death stares them in the face."
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"Find fault, when you must find fault, in private, if possible; and some time after the offense, rather than at the time."
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"What would life be without arithmetic, but a scene of horrors?"
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"The longer I live, the more I am convinced that the apothecary is of more importance than Seneca; and that half the unhappiness in the world proceeds from little stoppages; from a duct choked up, from food pressing in the wrong place, from a vexed duodenum, or an agitated pylorus."
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"Politeness is good nature regulated by good sense."
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"Let the Dean and Canons lay their heads together and the thing will be done."
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"Among the smaller duties of life I hardly know any one more important than that of not praising where praise is not due."
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"Do not try to push your way through to the front ranks of your profession; do not run after distinctions and rewards; but do your utmost to find an entry into the world of beauty."
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"Avoid shame, but do not seek glory; nothing so expensive as glory."
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"Heat, ma am! It was so dreadful here that I found there was nothing left for it but to take off my flesh and sit in my bones."
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"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."
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"How can a bishop marry? How can he flirt? The most he can say is "I will see you in the vestry after service.""
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