Daily Inspiration Quote by Sydney Smith

Praise, in Sydney Smith's hands, isn't a harmless nicety; it's a moral currency that can be debased. By calling it one of the "smaller duties of life", he sounds modest, even domestic. That's the trick. Smith smuggles a hard-edged ethical warning into the realm of everyday manners, where people tend to treat compliments as friction-reducing social grease. His line insists that false applause isn't neutral. It's a quiet form of corruption.

The intent is corrective: stop flattering out of habit, fear, or self-interest. Smith was a clergyman, but also a public moralist in an age when reputation functioned like social capital, especially among the educated classes who traded on wit, sermons, reviews, and patronage. In that world, overpraise doesn't just misdescribe reality; it rearranges incentives. It rewards the mediocre, teaches the talented to pander, and turns public judgment into a rigged game.

The subtext is also about courage. "Not praising where praise is not due" sounds passive, yet it requires active restraint: resisting the urge to buy goodwill, dodge conflict, or signal membership in a clique. Smith frames honesty as a duty precisely because the default setting of polite society is inflation. Compliments become a kind of soft bribe, and he refuses to participate.

There's a Protestant plainness here: moral clarity over social comfort. Smith isn't asking for cruelty or constant critique. He's drawing a boundary between kindness and dishonesty, suggesting that integrity often shows up not in grand sacrifices, but in the small, daily refusal to lie attractively.