Science is his forte, and omniscience his foible.

- Sydney Smith

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

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.

- Sydney Smith

Never talk for half a minute without pausing and giving others a chance to join in.

- Sydney Smith

Heaven never helps the men who will not act.

- Sydney Smith

I have, alas, only one illusion left, and that is the Archbishop of Canterbury.

- Sydney Smith

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

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

- Sydney Smith

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

- Sydney Smith

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

- Sydney Smith

Correspondences are like small clothes before the invention of suspenders; it is impossible to keep them up.

- Sydney Smith

To business that we love we rise bedtime, and go to't with delight.

- Sydney Smith

What a pity it is that we have no amusements in England but vice and religion!

- Sydney Smith

What would life be without arithmetic, but a scene of horrors?

- Sydney Smith

What you don't know would make a great book.

- Sydney Smith

Bishop Berkeley destroyed this world in one volume octavo; and nothing remained, after his time, but mind; which experienced a similar fate from the hand of Mr. Hume in 1737.

- Sydney Smith

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

It is safest to be moderately base - to be flexible in shame, and to be always ready for what is generous, good, and just, when anything is to be gained by virtue.

- Sydney Smith

Live always in the best company when you read.

- Sydney Smith

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.

- Sydney Smith