"Magnificent spectacle of human happiness."

Sydney Smith Philosophy See all quotes by Sydney Smith →

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“My idea of heaven is, eating pâté de foie gras to the sound of trumpets.”

“When I hear any man talk of an unalterable law, the only effect it produces upon me is to convince me that he is an unalterable fool.”

“I am old, but I certainly have not that sign of old age, extolling the past at the expense of the present.”

“My living in Yorkshire was so far out of the way, that it was actually twelve miles from a lemon.”

“I look upon Switzerland as an inferior sort of Scotland.”

“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.”

Resonant Thoughts

"Singing in the rain. I'm singing in the rain. And it's such a fucking glorious feeling. An unexpected downpour and I am just giving myself into it. Because what the fuck else can you do? Run for cover…"

— David Levithan

Literature1972

#happiness

"Free speech means being able to express an honest opinion—in case you didn't know—and my honest opinion is that Wahhabi Islam is such an obvious mental affliction, that science ought to be looking for…"

— Pat Condell

Literature1949

#history

"A strange persuasion came upon me that, save for the grossness of the line, the grotesqueness of the forms, I had here before me the whole balance of human life in miniature, the whole interplay of in…"

— H. G. Wells

Literature1866–1946

#life

"The truth is that, from the immense spectacle of the world, each novelists retains the one adventure which enable shim to give expression to his own essential self, just as the painter sees in nature …"

— André Maurois

opinion journalism1885–1967

#truth