Talk: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.

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

• Heaven never helps the men who will not act.

• I never read a book before reviewing it; it prejudices a man so.

• 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.

• Life is to be fortified by many friendships. To love and to be loved is the greatest happiness of existence.

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

• Thank God for tea! What would the world do without tea?—how did it exist? I am glad I was not born before tea.

• That sign of old age, extolling the past at the expense of the present.

• 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.

• We know nothing of tomorrow; our business is to be good and happy today.

• Whatever you are by nature, keep to it; never desert your line of talent. Be what nature intended you for, and you will succeed.

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

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

• [on being teased about talking to himself] I always address myself to the most intelligent

person present.