Quote

Human beings cling to their delicious tyrannies and to their exquisite nonsense, till death stares them in the face.

Sydney Smith

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Sydney Smith
Beings
Stares
Mankind
Cling
Face
Exquisite
Faces
Delicious
Death
Staring
Human
Nonsense
Humans
Tyranny
Till
Tyrannies

More quotes by Sydney Smith

Image
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
Image
I always fear that creation will expire before teatime.
Sydney Smith
Image
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
Image
Never give way to melancholy resist it steadily, for the habit will encroach.
Sydney Smith
Image
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
Image
Never try to reason the prejudice out of a man. It was not reasoned into him, and cannot be reasoned out.
Sydney Smith
Image
Great men hallow a whole people, and lift up all who live in their time.
Sydney Smith
Image
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
Image
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.
Sydney Smith
Image
Some men have only one book in them, others a library.
Sydney Smith
Image
Politeness is good nature regulated by good sense.
Sydney Smith
Image
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
Image
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.
Sydney Smith
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Find fault, when you must find fault, in private, if possible and some time after the offense, rather than at the time.
Sydney Smith
Image
I look upon Switzerland as an inferior sort of Scotland.
Sydney Smith
Image
Avoid shame, but do not seek glory nothing so expensive as glory.
Sydney Smith
Image
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
Image
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