Your ignorance, cramps my conversation.

—Sydney Smith

ignorance conversation

About Sydney Smith

Portrait of Sydney Smith

Sydney Smith (3 June 1771 – 22 February 1845) was an English writer and Anglican clergyman, mainly famous for his wit. Besides his energetic parochial work, he was known for his writing and philosophy, founding the Edinburgh Review, lecturing at the Royal Institution and his rhyming salad dressing recipe.

More quotations from Sydney Smith

There is one piece of advice, in a life of study, which I think no one will object to; and that is, every now and then to be completely idle—to do nothing at all.

—Sydney Smith

Live always in the best company when you read.

—Sydney Smith

Never try to reason the prejudice out of a man. It was not reasoned into him, and cannot be reasoned out.

—Sydney Smith

Human beings cling to their delicious tyrannies and to their exquisite nonsense, till death stares them in the face.

—Sydney Smith

life death nonsense

You must not think me necessarily foolish because I am facetious, nor will I consider you necessarily wise because you are grave.

—Sydney Smith

wisdom foolishness gravity

More quotations tagged with “conversation”

I don't know how to have casual conversation. You think you're talking about one thing, and either you are and it's incredibly boring, or you're not because it's subtext and you need a decoder ring.

—Sir Anthony Hawkins

boredom conversation subtlety subtext

There isn't much better in this life than finding a way to spend a few hours in conversation with people you respect and love. You have to carve this time out of your life because you aren't really living without it.

—Gordon Atkinson

Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for his competitors, for it is that which all are practising every day while they live.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.

conversation play

Conversation is food for the soul.

—Mexican Proverb

History

11 Jul 2015 Added