“I exhort you to restrain the violent tendency of your nature for analysis, and to cultivate synthetic propensities. What’s the use of virtue? What’s the use of wealth? What’s the use of honor? What’s a guinea but a damned yellow circle? What’s a chamber-pot but an infernal hollow sphere? The whole effort of your mind is to destroy. Because others build slightly and eagerly, you employ yourself in kicking down their houses, and contract a sort of aversion for the more honorable useful and difficult task of building well yourself.”
Sydney Smith, letter to Francis Jeffrey, April or May, 1804