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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.

Sydney Smith

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Sydney Smith
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Take short views, hope for the best and trust in God.
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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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Human beings cling to their delicious tyrannies and to their exquisite nonsense, till death stares them in the face.
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Some men have only one book in them, others a library.
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A comfortable house is a great source of happiness. It ranks immediately after health and a good conscience.
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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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Avoid shame, but do not seek glory nothing so expensive as glory.
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Never try to reason the prejudice out of a man. It was not reasoned into him, and cannot be reasoned out.
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Oh, don't tell me of facts, I never believe facts you know, [George] Canning said nothing was so fallacious as facts, except figures.
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Thank God for tea! What would the world do without tea! How did it exist? I am glad I was not born before tea.
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Politeness is good nature regulated by good sense.
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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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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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Great men hallow a whole people, and lift up all who live in their time.
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What two ideas are more inseparable than beer and Britannia?
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Whatever you are by nature, keep to it never desert your line of talent. Be what nature intended you for, and you will succeed.
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No man can ever end with being superior who will not begin with being inferior.
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