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“The world is like a board with holes in it, and the square men have got into the round holes.” --Sydney Smith (1771-1845) Shortened and Paraphrased. From "Lecture IX: On the Conduct of the Understanding" (Lectures, 1804-1806) #writerslift #life #authors #love #art #coffee #diary #write #books #amwriting #quotes #sydneysmith Long before “square pegs in round holes” became a catchphrase, English wit Sydney Smith used the image in an early 19th-century lecture on how people and jobs don’t always match up. In “On the Conduct of the Understanding,” he asked listeners to imagine a board with holes of different shapes and a pile of wooden pegs of corresponding shapes. You’d expect triangle in triangle and square in square, but in life it doesn’t usually work out that neatly. Instead, you find odd combinations where neither person nor role quite fits what’s expected. , Smith’s point wasn’t carpentry but human mismatch: expertise doesn’t always land where it belongs, jobs don’t always suit talent, and institutions often force people into ill-fitting roles. Out of that lively metaphor grew the modern idiom used to describe someone who is fundamentally unsuited to a situation. It’s a reminder that compatibility, between people, roles, and societies, matters more than mere placement, and that trying to force a fit often highlights the mismatch instead of fixing it. The original text: "If you choose to represent the various parts in life by holes upon a table, of different shapes—some circular, some triangular, some square, some oblong—and the persons acting these parts by bits of wood of similar shapes, we shall generally find that the triangular person has got into the square hole, the oblong into the triangular, and a square person has squeezed himself into the round hole. The officer and the office, the doer and the thing done, seldom fit so exactly that we can say they were almost made for each other."
“The world is like a board with holes in it, and the square men have got into the round holes.”
--Sydney Smith (1771-1845)
Shortened and Paraphrased.
From "Lecture IX: On the Conduct of the Understanding" (Lectures, 1804-1806)
#life #love #art #coffee #quotes #sydneysmith
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Day 4 of celebrating great #picturebooks with: I Talk Like a River by #jordanscott and #sydneysmith. Excellent and beautiful read 📖 #childrensbooks #picturebookcelebration 🎉🎉🎉
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Lauréat du prix Andersen 2024, l'illustrateur canadien Sydney Smith était à la Foire de Bologne cette année. Un travail magnifique. Rencontre.
A lire ici: lu-cieandco.blogspot.com/2025/04/sydn...
#litteraturejeunesse #art #sydneysmith #album #exposition #foiredebologne
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Day 4 (of7) of children’s book covers , no explanation. Challenging @whatsfsaid.bsky.social
Thanking #JoanneSchwartz #SydneySmith
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Enjoy #SantasFirstChristmas by #MacBarnett and illustrator #SydneySmith
Santa's elves make sure he gets to experience—for the very first time—the Christmas magic he provides for others, with the perfect tree, lots of delicious treats, and, of course, presents. A perfect read aloud for #Christmas!
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f you want to improve your understanding, drink coffee.
– Sydney Smith, English humorist
#coffeequote #SydneySmith
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Sydney Smith 2024 Hans Christian Andersen illustration award announcement with photo of the artist
Sydney Smith is my absolute favorite! So pleased he won this award. Also, I wish I were Canadian... Seems like they make more room for quiet there.
#sydneydraws #sydneysmith #illustration #hanschristianandersen #kidlit #kidlitart
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But now there’s work to do on my day off so I’ll leave you with my latest #picturebook recommendation which seems fitting to my reminiscing about Twitter of old… Do You Remember? by the double award winner of the Kate Greenaway Medal the fantastic #SydneySmith
#Reading4Pleasure
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