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.

Find fault when you must find fault in private, and if possible sometime after the offense, rather than at the time.

Science is his forte, and omniscience his foible.

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

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.

Great men hallow a whole people, and lift up all who live in their time.

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

Live always in the best company when you read.

Among the smaller duties of life I hardly know any one more important than that of not praising where praise is not due.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Heaven never helps the men who will not act.

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.

Let the Dean and Canons lay their heads together and the thing will be done.

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.

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

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