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:

    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)

    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.
    Sydney Smith (1771–1845)

    How can a bishop marry? How can he flirt? The most he can say is ‘I will see you in the vestry after service.’
    Sydney Smith (1771–1845)

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

    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.
    Sydney Smith (1771–1845)