Quote #8
Dean Swift's rule is as good for women as for men - never to talk above a half minute without pausing, and giving others an opportunity to strike in.
More from Sydney Smith
- Correspondences are like small clothes before the invention of suspenders; it is impossible to keep them up.
- Have the courage to be ignorant of a great number of things, in order to avoid the calamity of being ignorant of every thing.
- It is the safest to be moderately base - to be flexible in shame, and to be always ready for what is generous, good, and just, when anythin…
- A great deal of talent is lost to the world for the want of a little courage. Every day sends to their graves a number of obscure men who h…
- The object of preaching is, constantly to remind mankind of what mankind are constantly forgetting; not to supply the defects of human inte…
- Among the smaller duties of life I hardly know any one more important than that of not praising where praise is not due.
- Great men hallow a whole people and lift up all who live in their time.
- No man can ever end with being superior, who will not begin with being inferior.