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
I always fear that creation will expire before teatime.
Sydney Smith
Image
A great deal of talent is lost to the world for want of a little courage.
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
we know nothing of tomorrow, our business is to be good and happy today
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
What two ideas are more inseparable than beer and Britannia?
Sydney Smith
Image
Take short views, hope for the best and trust in God.
Sydney Smith
Image
Find fault, when you must find fault, in private, if possible and some time after the offense, rather than at the time.
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
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.
Sydney Smith
Image
Human beings cling to their delicious tyrannies and to their exquisite nonsense, till death stares them in the face.
Sydney Smith
Image
A comfortable house is a great source of happiness. It ranks immediately after health and a good conscience.
Sydney Smith
Image
Avoid shame, but do not seek glory nothing so expensive as glory.
Sydney Smith
Image
No man can ever end with being superior who will not begin with being inferior.
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
If you want to improve your understanding, drink coffee.
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
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
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
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