About Sydney Smith: Sydney Smith was an English wit, writer and Anglican cleric.
The fact is that in order to do anything in this world worth doing, we must not stand shivering on the bank thinking of the cold and the danger, but jump in and scramble through as well as we can.
The main question to a novel is -- did it amuse? were you surprised at dinner coming so soon? did you mistake eleven for ten? were you too late to dress? and did you sit up beyond the usual hour? If a novel produces these effects, it is good; if it d...
No furniture is so charming as books.
Thank God for tea! What would the world do without tea! How did it exist? I am glad I was not born before tea.
A man who wishes to make his way in life could do no better than go through the world with a boiling tea-kettle in his hand.
I always fear that creation will expire before teatime.
Live always in the best company when you read.
It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do little - do what you can.
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.
The thing about performance, even if it's only an illusion, is that it is a celebration of the fact that we do contain within ourselves infinite possibilities.
I never read a book before previewing it; it prejudices a man so.
Correspondences are like small clothes before the invention of suspenders; it is impossible to keep them up.
I have, alas, only one illusion left, and that is the Archbishop of Canterbury.
The object of preaching is to constantly remind mankind of what they keep forgetting; not to supply the intellect, but to fortify the feebleness of human resolutions.
Let the Dean and Canons lay their heads together and the thing will be done.
Poverty us no disgrace to a man, but it is confoundedly inconvenient.
No man can ever end with being superior who will not begin with being inferior.
Never give way to melancholy; resist it steadily, for the habit will encroach.
To do anything in this world worth doing, we must not stand back shivering and thinking of the cold and danger, but jump in, and scramble through as well as we can.
It resembles a pair of shears, so joined that they cannot be separated, often moving in opposite directions, yet always punishing anyone who comes between them.
