Sydney Smith

1771–1845 · English clergyman, essayist & co-founder of the Edinburgh Review

Sydney Smith was an English Anglican cleric, writer, and celebrated conversational wit, remembered as one of the founders of the Edinburgh Review in 1802. The line traces to his lectures on moral philosophy delivered at the Royal Institution in 1804–1806 and published posthumously in 1850, where he warned against the paralysis of doing nothing simply because one can do only a little.

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“Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little”

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