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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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Human beings cling to their delicious tyrannies and to their exquisite nonsense, till death stares them in the face.
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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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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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I look upon Switzerland as an inferior sort of Scotland.
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Take short views, hope for the best and trust in God.
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Great men hallow a whole people, and lift up all who live in their time.
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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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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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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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Hope is the belief, more or less strong, that joy will come.
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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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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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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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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.
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His enemies might have said before that he talked rather too much but now he has occasional flashes of silence, that make his conversation perfectly delightful.
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No man can ever end with being superior who will not begin with being inferior.
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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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Some men have only one book in them, others a library.
Sydney Smith