Sydney Smith

Ah, you flavour everything; you are the vanilla of society.

You find people ready enough to do the Samaritan, without the oil and twopence.

He has spent all his life in letting down empty buckets into empty wells; and he is frittering away his age in trying to draw them up again.

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

[He] has not body enough to cover his mind decently with; his intellect is improperly exposed.

How can a bishop marry? How can he flirt? The most he can say is, "I will see you in the vestry after service."

Madam, I have been looking for a person who disliked gravy all my life; let us swear eternal friendship.

The Smiths never had any arms, and have invariably sealed their letters with their thumbs.

No furniture so charming as books.

Economy, in the estimation of common minds, often means the absence of all taste and comfort.

She looked as if she had walked straight out of the ark.

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

Let every man be occupied, and occupied in the highest employment of which his nature is capable, and die with the consciousness that he has done his best.

The fox, when caught, is worth nothing: he is followed for the pleasure of following.

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

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

It is always right that a man should be able to render a reason for the faith that is within him.

The English, generally remarkable for doing very good things in a very bad manner, seem to have reserved the maturity and plenitude of their awkwardness for the pulpit.

Preaching has become a byword for long and dull conversation of any kind; and whoever wishes to imply, in any piece of writing, the absence of everything agreeable and inviting, calls it a sermon.

Truth is its [justice's] handmaid, freedom is its child, peace is its companion, safety walks in its steps, victory follows in its train; it is the brightest emanation from the Gospel; it is the greatest attribute of God.

We cultivate literature on a little oatmeal.

No one minds what Jeffrey says:[…] it is not more than a week ago that I heard him speak disrespectfully of the Equator.

That knuckle-end of England—that land of Calvin, oatcakes, and sulphur.

It requires a surgical operation to get a joke well into a Scotch understanding.