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Politeness is good nature regulated by good sense.

Sydney Smith

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Sydney Smith
Regulated
Politeness
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Sense
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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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we know nothing of tomorrow, our business is to be good and happy today
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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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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If you want to improve your understanding, drink coffee.
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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A great deal of talent is lost to the world for want of a little courage.
Sydney Smith
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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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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
Sydney Smith
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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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Take short views, hope for the best and trust in God.
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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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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I look upon Switzerland as an inferior sort of Scotland.
Sydney Smith
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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.
Sydney Smith
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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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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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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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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