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Politeness is good nature regulated by good sense.

Sydney Smith

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Sydney Smith
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More quotes by 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.
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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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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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A comfortable house is a great source of happiness. It ranks immediately after health and a good conscience.
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I always fear that creation will expire before teatime.
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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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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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Find fault, when you must find fault, in private, if possible and some time after the offense, rather than at the time.
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A great deal of talent is lost to the world for want of a little courage.
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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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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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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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we know nothing of tomorrow, our business is to be good and happy today
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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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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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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
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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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Some men have only one book in them, others a library.
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