151 Quotes by 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Marriage resembles a pair of shears, so joined that they cannot be separated; often moving in opposite directions, yet always punishing any one who comes between them.