Sydney Smith

Sydney Smith (3 June 1771 – 22 February 1845) was an English writer and Anglican cleric.

Read more about Sydney Smith:  Life, Legacy, Primary Literature, Secondary Literature

Famous quotes by sydney smith:

    A nation grown free in a single day is a child born with the limbs and the vigour of a man, who would take a drawn sword for his rattle, and set the house in a blaze that he might chuckle over the splendour.
    Sydney Smith (1771–1845)

    What two ideas are more inseparable than beer and Britannia?
    Sydney Smith (1771–1845)

    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.
    Sydney Smith (1771–1845)

    It requires a surgical operation to get a joke well into a Scotch understanding. The only idea of wit, or rather that inferior variety of the electric talent which prevails occasionally in the North, and which, under the name of ‘Wut,’ is so infinitely distressing to people of good taste, is laughing immoderately at stated intervals.
    Sydney Smith (1771–1845)

    Avoid shame but do not seek glory—nothing so expensive as glory.
    Sydney Smith (1771–1845)