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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.

Sydney Smith

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Sydney Smith
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More quotes by Sydney Smith

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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.
Sydney Smith
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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.
Sydney Smith
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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.
Sydney Smith
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Hope is the belief, more or less strong, that joy will come.
Sydney Smith
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If you want to improve your understanding, drink coffee.
Sydney Smith
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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.
Sydney Smith
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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
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Life is to be fortified by many friendships. To love and to be loved is the greatest happiness of existence.
Sydney Smith
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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.
Sydney Smith
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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.
Sydney Smith
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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.
Sydney Smith
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Scotland: That garret of the earth - that knuckle-end of England - that land of Calvin, oatcakes, and sulfur.
Sydney Smith
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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.
Sydney Smith
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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.
Sydney Smith
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A great deal of talent is lost to the world for want of a little courage.
Sydney Smith
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Take short views, hope for the best and trust in God.
Sydney Smith
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Some men have only one book in them, others a library.
Sydney Smith
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Never give way to melancholy resist it steadily, for the habit will encroach.
Sydney Smith
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Avoid shame, but do not seek glory nothing so expensive as glory.
Sydney Smith
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Politeness is good nature regulated by good sense.
Sydney Smith