Quote

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.

Sydney Smith

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Sydney Smith
Idea
Composing
Running
Vigor
Give
Pens
Ideas
Rule
Giving
General
Writing
Style
Every
Written
Word
Brevity

More quotes by Sydney Smith

Image
Have the courage to be ignorant of a great number of things, in order to avoid the calamity of being ignorant of everything.
Sydney Smith
Image
Scotland: That garret of the earth - that knuckle-end of England - that land of Calvin, oatcakes, and sulfur.
Sydney Smith
Image
The two women exchanged the type of glance women use when there is no knife handy.
Sydney Smith
Image
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.
Sydney Smith
Image
His enemies might have said before that he talked rather too much but now he has occasional flashes of silence, that make his conversation perfectly delightful.
Sydney Smith
Image
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.
Sydney Smith
Image
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
Sydney Smith
Image
Thank God for tea! What would the world do without tea! How did it exist? I am glad I was not born before tea.
Sydney Smith
Image
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.
Sydney Smith
Image
Among the smaller duties of life I hardly know any one more important than that of not praising where praise is not due.
Sydney Smith
Image
How can a bishop marry? How can he flirt? The most he can say is I will see you in the vestry after service.
Sydney Smith
Image
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.
Sydney Smith
Image
A comfortable house is a great source of happiness. It ranks immediately after health and a good conscience.
Sydney Smith
Image
What two ideas are more inseparable than beer and Britannia?
Sydney Smith
Image
No man can ever end with being superior who will not begin with being inferior.
Sydney Smith
Image
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.
Sydney Smith
Image
Oh, don't tell me of facts, I never believe facts you know, [George] Canning said nothing was so fallacious as facts, except figures.
Sydney Smith
Image
Avoid shame, but do not seek glory nothing so expensive as glory.
Sydney Smith
Image
I look upon Switzerland as an inferior sort of Scotland.
Sydney Smith
Image
Never give way to melancholy resist it steadily, for the habit will encroach.
Sydney Smith