"Oh, don't tell me of facts -- I never believe facts: you know Canning said nothing was so fallacious as facts, except figures."

Smith, Sydney on Facts
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"It is always right that a man should be able to render a reason for the faith that is within him."

Smith, Sydney on Faith
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"Life is to be fortified by many friendships. To love and to be loved is the greatest happiness of existence."

Smith, Sydney on Friends and Friendship
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"It is a bore, I admit, to be past seventy, for you are left for execution, and are daily expecting the death-warrant; but it is not anything very capital we quit. We are, at the close of life, only hurried away from stomach-aches, pains in the joints, from sleepless nights and unamusing days, from weakness, ugliness, and nervous tremors; but we shall all meet again in another planet, cured of all our defects."

Smith, Sydney on Age and Aging
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"Avoid shame but do not seek glory --nothing so expensive as glory."

Smith, Sydney on Glory
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"Great men hallow a whole people, and lift up all who live in their time."

Smith, Sydney on Greatness
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This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

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

Smith, Sydney on Home
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"Have the courage to be ignorant of a great number of things, in order to avoid the calamity of being ignorant of everything."

Smith, Sydney on Ignorance
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"Correspondences are like small clothes before the invention of suspenders; it is impossible to keep them up."

Smith, Sydney on Letters
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"To love and be loved is the great happiness of existence."

Smith, Sydney on Love
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"Manners are like the shadows of virtues, they are the momentary display of those qualities which our fellow creatures love and respect."

Smith, Sydney on Manners
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"It resembles a pair of shears, so joined that they cannot be separated, often moving in opposite directions, yet always punishing anyone who comes between them."

Smith, Sydney on Marriage
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"Married couples resemble a pair of scissors, often moving in opposite directions, yet punishing anyone who gets in between them."

Smith, Sydney on Marriage
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"What would life be without arithmetic, but a scene of horrors?"

Smith, Sydney on Mathematics
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"It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can do only a little. Do what you can."

Smith, Sydney on Perseverance
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"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."

Smith, Sydney on Philosophers and Philosophy
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"Poverty is no disgrace to a man, but it is confoundedly inconvenient."

Smith, Sydney on Poverty and The Poor
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"No man can ever end with being superior who will not begin with being inferior."

Smith, Sydney on Power
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"Among the smaller duties of life I hardly know any one more important than that of not praising where praise is not due."

Smith, Sydney on Praise
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"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."

Smith, Sydney on Preachers and Preaching
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"Never try to reason the prejudice out of a man. It was not reasoned into him, and cannot be reasoned out."

Smith, Sydney on Reason
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"A nation grown free in a single day is a child born with the limbs and the vigor 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 splendor."

Smith, Sydney on Revolutions and Revolutionaries
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"Whatever you are from nature, keep to it; never desert your own line of talent. Be what nature intended you for, and you will succeed; be anything else, and you will be ten thousand times worse than nothing."

Smith, Sydney on Self-love
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"His enemies might have said before that he talked rather too much; but now he has occasional flashes of silence, that make his conversation perfectly delightful."

Smith, Sydney on Silence
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"He had occasional flashes of silence that made his conversation perfectly delightful."

Smith, Sydney on Silence
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"Solitude cherishes great virtues and destroys little ones."

Smith, Sydney on Solitude
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"No furniture is so charming as books."

Smith, Sydney on Books - Reading
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"Live always in the best company when you read."

Smith, Sydney on Books - Reading
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"All this class of pleasures inspires me with the same nausea as I feel at the sight of rich plum-cake or sweetmeats; I prefer the driest bread of common life."

Smith, Sydney on Theater
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"Heat, ma am! It was so dreadful here that I found there was nothing left for it but to take off my flesh and sit in my bones."

Smith, Sydney on Weather
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"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."

Smith, Sydney on Wickedness
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"The writer does the most good who gives his reader the most knowledge and takes from him the least time."

Smith, Sydney on Writers and Writing
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"The greatest of all mistakes is to do nothing because you can only do a little. Do what you can."

Smith, Sydney on Action
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"I have, alas, only one illusion left, and that is the Archbishop of Canterbury."

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

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

Smith, Sydney on Compatibility
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"Never talk for half a minute without pausing and giving others a chance to join in."

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

Smith, Sydney on Correction
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"A great deal of talent is lost in the world for want of courage."

Smith, Sydney on Courage
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"I never read a book before reviewing it; it prejudices a man so."

Smith, Sydney on Critics and Criticism
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