Sydney Smith

More from Sydney Smith

• It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do little.

  Often credited to Edmund Burke

  • Morality

• Marriage resembles a pair of shears, so joined that they cannot be separated; often moving in opposite directions, yet always punishing any one who comes between them.

  Lady Holland’s Memoir (1855)

  • Marriage

• As the French say, there are three sexes — men, women, and clergymen.

  Lady Holland’s Memoir (1855), Vol. I, ch. 9, p. 313

  • Comedy
  • Religion

All 28 quotes from Sydney Smith

Popular quotes

• No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent.

  John Donne1572–1631No Man Is an Island (1624), Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (1624), Meditation 17In context

• I came, I saw, I conquered.

  Julius Caesar100–44 BCInscription on the triumphal wagon reported in The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius, as translated by Robert Graves (1957).

  • Success

• The unexamined life is not worth living.

  Socrates470–399 BCThe Apology of Socrates (399 BC)

  • Philosophy