Manners are the shadows of virtues; the momentary display of those qualities which our fellow-creatures love and respect. If we strive to become, then, what we strive to appear, manners may often be rendered useful guides to the performance of our duties.

— Sydney Smith

Sydney Smith Quotes

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

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

When I hear any man talk of an unalterable law, the only effect it produces on me is to convince me that he is an unalterable fool.

— Sydney Smith

No man can ever end with being superior who will not begin with being inferior.

— Sydney Smith

Never try to reason the prejudice out of a man. It was not reasoned into him, and cannot be reasoned out.

— Sydney Smith

Never give way to melancholy; resist it steadily, for the habit will encroach.

— Sydney Smith

He not only overflowed with learning, but stood in the slop.

— Sydney Smith

Scotland: That garret of the earth – that knuckle-end of England – that land of Calvin, oatcakes, and sulfur.

— Sydney Smith

Some men have only one book in them, others a library.

— Sydney Smith

Poverty is no disgrace to a man, but it is confoundedly inconvenient.

— Sydney Smith

Great men hallow a whole people, and lift up all who live in their time.

— Sydney Smith

When you rise in the morning, form a resolution to make the day a happy one for a fellow creature.

— Sydney Smith

Politeness is good nature regulated by good sense.

— Sydney Smith

Avoid shame, but do not seek glory; nothing so expensive as glory.

— Sydney Smith

Take short views, hope for the best and trust in God.

— Sydney Smith

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 does not – story, language, love, scandal itself cannot save it. It is only meant to please; and it must do that or it does nothing.

— Sydney Smith

It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do little; do something.

— Sydney Smith

Never give way to melancholy: nothing encroaches more; I fight against it vigorously. One great remedy is, to take short views of life. Are you happy now? Are you likely to remain so till this evening? or next week? or next year? Then why destroy present happiness by a distant misery, which may never come at all, or you may never live to see it? For every substantial grief has twenty shadows, and most of them shadows of your own making.

— Sydney Smith

Manners are the shadows of virtues; the momentary display of those qualities which our fellow-creatures love and respect. If we strive to become, then, what we strive to appear, manners may often be rendered useful guides to the performance of our duties.

— Sydney Smith

Many in this world run after felicity like an absent man hunting for his hat, while all the time it is on his head or in his hand.

— Sydney Smith
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