“It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do little.”
Sydney Smith (1771–1845) English writer and clergyman
Lecture XIX : On the Conduct of the Understanding, Part II
Elementary Sketches of Moral Philosophy (1849)
“Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.”
Not found in Burke's writings. Appears to be a paraphrase of "It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do little." sourced to Sydney Smith (1771 - 1845).
Last update Nov. 2, 2021. History
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Edmund Burke270
Anglo-Irish statesman 1729–1797Related quotes
“Nothing can be greater than love. God is great only because He has infinite Love.”
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Source: Service-Boat And Love-Boatman (1974), p. 2, Part 1
Context: Nothing can be greater than love. God is great only because He has infinite Love. If we want to define God, we can define Him in millions of ways, but I wish to say that no definition of God can be as adequate as the definition of God as all Love. When we say "God", if fear comes into our mind, then we are millions and billions of miles away from Him. When we repeat the name of God, if love comes to the fore, then our prayer, our concentration, our meditation, our contemplation are genuine.
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Lora Leigh (1965) American writer
Source: Killer Secrets
“He said nothing: seldom do those who are silent make mistakes.”
Neil Gaiman (1960) English fantasy writer
Source: Norse Mythology (2017), Chapter 4, “Mimir’s Head and Odin’s Eye” (p. 45)
Ted Hughes book The Iron Man
Source: The Iron Man (1968), Ch. 1 : The Coming of the Iron Man
Context: The Iron Man came to the top of the cliff. How far had he walked? Nobody knows. Where did he come from? Nobody knows. How was he made? Nobody knows. Taller than a house the Iron Man stood at the top of the cliff, at the very brink, in the darkness.
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Source: Self-Help; with Illustrations of Character and Conduct (1859), Ch. XI : Self-Culture — Facilities and Difficulties.
Source: The Lives Of George And Robert Stephenson
Context: We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success. We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery.
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On Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston, as quoted in Victorian England : Aspects of English and Imperial History, 1837-1901 (1973) by Lewis Charles Bernard Seaman, p. 108
“Goldsmith, however, was a man who whatever he wrote, did it better than any other man could do.”
Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer
1778
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Life of Johnson (Boswell)