He has spent all his life in letting down empty buckets into empty wells; and he is frittering away his age in trying to draw them up again. – Sydney Smith
We know nothing of tomorrow; our business is to be good and happy today. – Sydney Smith
In the country I always fear that creation will expire before tea-time. – Sydney Smith
Correspondences are like small clothes before the invention of suspenders; it is impossible to keep them up. – Sydney Smith
The civil law cannot provide but by common measures… all their rules are made by as common a measure as they can, and they are the best rules that have the fewest exceptions: the best Carpenters make the fewest chips: but some there must be. – Jeremy Taylor, Ductor Dubitantium, or The Rule of Conscience, 1659