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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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Sydney Smith
Science
Facts
Tell
Canning
Nothing
Fallacious
Believe
George
Never
Figures
Except
Belief

More quotes by Sydney Smith

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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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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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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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Have the courage to be ignorant of a great number of things, in order to avoid the calamity of being ignorant of everything.
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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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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
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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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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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I look upon Switzerland as an inferior sort of Scotland.
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.
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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Hope is the belief, more or less strong, that joy will come.
Sydney Smith
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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.
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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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
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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
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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.
Sydney Smith
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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.
Sydney Smith
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No man can ever end with being superior who will not begin with being inferior.
Sydney Smith
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I always fear that creation will expire before teatime.
Sydney Smith