A Quote by Sydney Smith

What would life be without arithmetic, but a scene of horrors? — © Sydney Smith
What would life be without arithmetic, but a scene of horrors?
Lucy, dear child, mind your arithmetic. You know in the first sum of yours I ever saw there was a mistake. You had carried two (as a cab is licensed to do), and you ought, dear Lucy, to have carried but one. Is this a trifle? What would life be without arithmetic, but a scene of horrors.
The three horrors of modern life - talk without meaning, desire without love, work without satisfaction.
In fact, Gentlemen, no geometry without arithmetic, no mechanics without geometry... you cannot count upon success, if your mind is not sufficiently exercised on the forms and demonstrations of geometry, on the theories and calculations of arithmetic ... In a word, the theory of proportions is for industrial teaching, what algebra is for the most elevated mathematical teaching.
You can't feel sorry for a scene. If the movie works without the scene, then you don't need the scene.
I had developed a survival skill of using my wit to score for myself. If a scene was dying, I'd lob in these little bombshell lines that would get me some attention and a laugh without really helping the scene.
No employment can be managed without arithmetic, no mechanical invention without geometry.
Even on the old show, we would maybe not all be in the scene. Sometimes there would be a penthouse scene and everyone would get together. But, even in that context, it would be because somebody was missing.
But : We're still human. Human because we keep on battling against all these horrors, the horrors caused and not caused by us. We battle not in order to stay alive, that would be too materalistic, for we are body and spirit, but in order to love each other.
Without the Holy Spirit, Christian discipleship would be inconceivable, even impossible. There can be no life without the life-giver, no understanding without the Spirit of truth, no fellowship without the unity of the Spirit, no Christlikeness of character apart from His fruit, and no effective witness without His power. As a body without breath is a corpse, so the church without the Spirit is dead.
To parents who despair because their children are unable to master the first problems in arithmetic I can dedicate my examples. For, in arithmetic, until the seventh grade I was last or nearly last.
Sometimes you will do a close-up for a scene in the morning where you are totally distraught, then shoot the rest of that scene seven hours later. How do you hang on to that feeling all day without burning up, without going so far that you have nothing left to give when the cameras roll again?
No man acquires property without acquiring with it a little arithmetic also.
I would watch movies on the couch in my house. If I saw a scene played by a woman or a man - it doesn't matter - a scene I really liked, I would right away run to the mirror and repeat it.
Since I am a person who starts work without clear knowledge of a storyline, every single scene is a pivotal scene.
I also think within the scene, a specific scene - if I were to play a part that I played 10 years ago now, my interpretation of that scene would be totally different. I would be making different choices. Because I can't somehow subtract all of the experiences that I've had in my life. And it's fascinating to see, because somewhere I'm very reflective in that. You know, I've been playing basically actually close to 40 years old, so I'm somewhere lost in age in this movie. But it's been fascinating to see that I can't subtract that time.
In these interviews, they've been asking me for a while, 'If you could do a scene with anybody that you haven't done a scene with yet, who would it be?' It would be Christian Stolte. He's the most incredible actor. He is always the smartest person in the room.
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