Heat, ma’am! it was so dreadful here, that I found there was nothing left for it but to take off my flesh and sit in my bones.

This is one of Sydney Smith’s characteristic comic hyperboles about oppressive weather, cast as a snippet of reported conversation (“ma’am”) in which he describes heat so extreme that he imagines stripping off his very flesh and remaining only as bones. The line circulates chiefly as an example of Smith’s wit in later anthologies and quotation collections rather than as a self-contained published aphorism. It is generally treated as a remark from his social correspondence or talk, preserved secondhand, and is often grouped with other Smith quips about discomforts of climate and travel.

In this hyperbolic, comic complaint, Smith turns physical discomfort into a grotesque but witty image: the heat is so extreme that the speaker imagines stripping off not merely clothing but “flesh,” reduced to “bones.” The joke depends on deliberate impossibility and on the prim, conversational address (“ma’am!”), which heightens the absurdity by treating the outrageous image as polite reportage. It exemplifies Smith’s reputation as a master of social satire and after-dinner anecdote, using exaggeration to make a mundane grievance memorable while also poking fun at the speaker’s own melodrama.