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Quotes from Lady Holland's Memoir — Sydney Smith

1771–1845 England

← All quotes by Sydney Smith

50 quotes

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

Lady Holland's Memoir (1855)

Live always in the best company when you read.

Lady Holland's Memoir (1855)

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

Lady Holland's Memoir (1855)

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

Lady Holland's Memoir (1855)

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

Lady Holland's Memoir (1855)

Macaulay is like a book in breeches...He has occasional flashes of silence, that make his conversation perfectly delightful.

Lady Holland's Memoir (1855)

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.

Lady Holland's Memoir (1855)

Praise is the best diet for us, after all.

Lady Holland's Memoir (1855)

A comfortable house is a great source of happiness. It ranks immediately after health and a good conscience.

Lady Holland's Memoir (1855)

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.

Lady Holland's Memoir (1855)

He [Macaulay] is like a book in breeches.

Lady Holland's Memoir (1855)

I am old, but I certainly have not that sign of old age, extolling the past at the expense of the present.

Lady Holland's Memoir (1855)

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

Lady Holland's Memoir (1855)

Ah! what you don't know would make a great book.

Lady Holland's Memoir (1855)

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.

Lady Holland's Memoir (1855)

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

Lady Holland's Memoir (1855)

In composing, as a general rule, run your pen through every other word you have written; you have no idea what vigour it will give your style.

Lady Holland's Memoir (1855)

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.

Lady Holland's Memoir (1855)

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.

Lady Holland's Memoir (1855)

I look upon Switzerland as an inferior sort of Scotland.

Lady Holland's Memoir (1855)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Sydney Smith (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.