Quote by Sydney Smith
In composing, as a general rule, run your pen through every other

In composing, as a general rule, run your pen through every other word you have written; you have no idea what vigor it will give your style. – Sydney Smith

Other quotes by Sydney Smith

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

Category:
respect
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The observances of the church concerning feasts and fasts are tolerably well-kept, since the rich keep the feasts and the poor keep the fasts. – Sydney Smith

Category:
Fasting
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Human beings cling to their delicious tyrannies and to their exquisite nonsense, till death stares them in the face. – Sydney Smith

Category:
Humankind
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Other Quotes from
Brevity
category

Good things, when short, are twice as good. – Baltasar Gracián, The Art of Worldly Wisdom, translated from Spanish

Category:
Brevity

If you bring that sentence in for a fitting, I can have it shortened by Wednesday. – M*A*S*H, Hawkeye, “The Gun”

Category:
Brevity

If you would be pungent, be brief; for it is with words as with sunbeams — the more they are condensed, the deeper they burn. – Robert Southey

Category:
Brevity

“In good prose (says Schlegel) every word should be underlined!” that is, every word should be the right one; and then no one would be righter than another. There are no italics in Plato. – Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers

Category:
Brevity

Random Quotes

The difference between art about death and actual death is that ones a celebration and the others a dull fact. – Damien Hirst

Category:
Death

In matters of principals, stand like a rock; in matters of taste, swim with the current. – Thomas Jefferson

Category:
Principles

Theres no one place a virus goes to die – but that doesnt make its demise any less a public health victory. Throughout human history, viral diseases have had their way with us, and for just as long, we have hunted them down and done our best to wipe them out. – Jeffrey Kluger

Category:
Health

When we recall Christmas past, we usually find that the simplest things — not the great occasions — give off the greatest glow of happiness. – Bob Hope

Category:
Christmas