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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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Hope is the belief, more or less strong, that joy will come.
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The two women exchanged the type of glance women use when there is no knife handy.
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I look upon Switzerland as an inferior sort of Scotland.
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Scotland: That garret of the earth - that knuckle-end of England - that land of Calvin, oatcakes, and sulfur.
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Life is to be fortified by many friendships. To love and to be loved is the greatest happiness of existence.
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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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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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If you want to improve your understanding, drink coffee.
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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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No man can ever end with being superior who will not begin with being inferior.
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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.
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Some men have only one book in them, others a library.
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Great men hallow a whole people, and lift up all who live in their time.
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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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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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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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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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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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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.
Sydney Smith