Top 100 Quotes About Oliver Goldsmith
#1. Where commerce and capitalism are invloved, often times, morality and honor sink to the bottom-Oliver Goldsmith paraphrased
Oliver Goldsmith
#2. The life of man is a journey; a journey that must be travelled, however bad the roads or the accommodation. Oliver Goldsmith
SummersDale
#4. Ridicule has always been the enemy of enthusiasm, and the only worthy opponent to ridicule is success.
Oliver Goldsmith
#5. Fear guides more to their duty than gratitude; for one man who is virtuous from the love of virtue, from the obligation he thinks he lies under to the Giver of all, there are ten thousand who are good only from their apprehension of punishment.
Oliver Goldsmith
#6. The whitewash'd wall, the nicely sanded floor, The varnish'd clock that click'd behind the door; The chest, contriv'd a double debt to pay,- A bed by night, a chest of drawers by day.
Oliver Goldsmith
#7. ... The more enormous our wealth, the more extensive our fears, all our possessions are paled up with new edicts every day, and hung round with gibbets to scare every invader.
Oliver Goldsmith
#8. Ridicule has even been the most powerful enemy of enthusiasm, and properly the only antagonist that can be opposed to it with success.
Oliver Goldsmith
#9. As in some Irish houses, where things are so-so,
One gammon of bacon hangs up for a show;
But, for eating a rasher of what they take pride in,
They'd as soon think of eating the pan it is fried in.
Oliver Goldsmith
#10. See me, how calm I am.
Ay, people are generally calm at the misfortunes of others.
Oliver Goldsmith
#12. Here lies David Garrick, describe me who can, An abridgment of all that was pleasant in man.
Oliver Goldsmith
#14. In my box of sound bites there are no jackhammers, no snowmobiles, no Jet Skis, no children wailing. Music but no Muzak.
It's my box. Put what you want in yours.
Joan Oliver Goldsmith
#15. Whenever you see a gaming table be sure to know fortune is not there. Rather she is always in the company of industry.
Oliver Goldsmith
#16. No vernal blooms their torpid rocks array,
But winter lingering chills the lap of May;
No zephyr fondly sues the mountain's breast,
But meteors glare, and stormy glooms invest.
Oliver Goldsmith
#17. One man is born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and the other with a wooden ladle.
Oliver Goldsmith
#18. Religion does what philosophy could never do; it shows the equal dealings of Heaven to the happy and the unhappy, and levels all human enjoyments to nearly the same standard. It gives to both rich and poor the same happiness hereafter, and equal hopes to aspire after it.
Oliver Goldsmith
#20. Romance and novel paint beauty in colors more charming than nature, and describe a happiness that humans never taste. How deceptive and destructive are those pictures of consummate bliss!
Oliver Goldsmith
#21. A great source of calamity lies in regret and anticipation; therefore a person is wise who thinks of the present alone, regardless of the past or future.
Oliver Goldsmith
#22. As ten millions of circles can never make a square, so the united voice of myriads cannot lend the smallest foundation to falsehood.
Oliver Goldsmith
#23. I was ever of the opinion, that the honest man who married and brought up a large family, did more service than he who continued single, and only talked of population.
Oliver Goldsmith
#25. In my time, the follies of the town crept slowly among us, but now they travel faster than a stagecoach.
Oliver Goldsmith
#26. I have found by experience that they who have spent all their lives in cities contract not only an effeminacy of habit, but of thinking.
Oliver Goldsmith
#27. The first time I read an excellent book, it is to me just as if I had gained a new friend. When I read a book over I have perused before, it resembles the meeting with an old one.
Oliver Goldsmith
#28. It world be well had we more misers than we have among us.
Oliver Goldsmith
#29. If you don't ask me questions, I can't give you an untrue answer.
Oliver Goldsmith
#30. What we say of a thing that has just come in fashion
And that which we do with the dead,
Is the name of the honestest man in the nation:
What more of a man can be said?
Oliver Goldsmith
#32. She who makes her husband and her children happy, who reclaims the one from vice, and trains up the other to virtue, is a much greater character than the ladies described in romance, whose whole occupation is to murder mankind with shafts from their quiver or their eyes.
Oliver Goldsmith
#33. The youth who follows his appetites too soon seizes the cup, before it has received its best ingredients, and by anticipating his pleasures, robs the remaining parts of life of their share, so that his eagerness only produces manhood of imbecility and an age of pain.
Oliver Goldsmith
#34. Thou source of all my bliss and all my woe, That found'st me poor at first, and keep'st me so.
Oliver Goldsmith
#37. With disadvantages enough to bring him to humility, a Scotsman is one of the proudest things alive.
Oliver Goldsmith
#38. Logicians have but ill defined As rational the human mind; Reason, they say, belongs to man, But let them prove it if they can.
Oliver Goldsmith
#39. The little mind who loves itself, will wr'te and think with the vulgar; but the great mind will be bravely eccentric, and scorn the beaten road, from universal benevolence.
Oliver Goldsmith
#40. Thus 'tis with all; their chief and constant care Is to seem everything but what they are.
Oliver Goldsmith
#41. Such dainties to them, their health it might hurt; It 's like sending them ruffles when wanting a shirt.
Oliver Goldsmith
#43. The true use of speech is not so much to express our wants as to conceal them.
Oliver Goldsmith
#44. At this he laughed, and so did we: the jests of the rich are ever successful.
Oliver Goldsmith
#45. Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog And in that town a dog was found, As many dogs there be, Both mongrel, puppy, whelp, and hound, And curs of low degree.
Oliver Goldsmith
#46. Hope, like the gleaming taper's light, adorns and cheers our way; and still, as darker grows the night, emits a brighter ray.
Oliver Goldsmith
#47. Who mix'd reason with pleasure, and wisdom with mirth: If he had any faults, he has left us in doubt.
Oliver Goldsmith
#48. To a philosopher no circumstance, however trifling, is too minute.
Oliver Goldsmith
#49. Truth from his lips prevailed with double sway, and fools, who came to scoff, remained to pray.
Oliver Goldsmith
#50. All the sciences are, in some measure, linked with each other, and before the one is ended, the other begins.
Oliver Goldsmith
#51. Books are necessary to correct the vices of the polite; but those vices are ever changing, and the antidote should be changed accordingly should still be new.
Oliver Goldsmith
#52. Philosophy ... should not pretend to increase our present stock, but make us economists of what we are possessed of.
Oliver Goldsmith
#54. Mortifications are often more painful than real calamities.
Oliver Goldsmith
#55. The person whose clothes are extremely fine I am too apt to consider as not being possessed of any superiority of fortune, but resembling those Indians who are found to wear all the gold they have in the world in a bob at the nose.
Oliver Goldsmith
#56. Even children follow'd with endearing wile, And pluck'd his gown, to share the good man's smile.
Oliver Goldsmith
#57. The world is like a vast sea: mankind like a vessel sailing on its tempestuous bosom ... [T]he sciences serve us for oars.
Oliver Goldsmith
#58. It seemed to me pretty plain, that they had more of love than matrimony in them.
Oliver Goldsmith
#59. Friendship is a disinterested commerce between equals; love an abject intercourse between tyrants and slaves.
Oliver Goldsmith
#60. If frugality were established in the state, and if our expenses were laid out to meet needs rather than superfluities of life, there might be fewer wants, and even fewer pleasures, but infinitely more happiness.
Oliver Goldsmith
#61. Death when unmasked shows us a friendly face and is a terror only at a distance.
Oliver Goldsmith
#62. A traveler of taste will notice that the wise are polite all over the world, but the fool only at home.
Oliver Goldsmith
#63. I could not but smile to hear her talking in this lofty strain, but I was never much displeased with those harmless delusions that tend to make us more happy.
Oliver Goldsmith
#64. Nothing is so contemptible as that affectation of wisdom, which some display, by universal incredulity.
Oliver Goldsmith
#65. Our bounty, like a drop of water, disappears, when diffus'd too widely
Oliver Goldsmith
#66. Conscience is a coward, and those faults it has not strength enough to prevent it seldom has justice enough to accuse.
Oliver Goldsmith
#67. Pity and friendship are two passions incompatible with each other.
Oliver Goldsmith
#68. They please, are pleas'd, they give to get esteem Till, seeming blest, they grow to what they seem.
Oliver Goldsmith
#69. Eternal blessings crown my earliest friend,
And round his dwelling guardian saints attend.
Oliver Goldsmith
#70. Is it that Nature, attentive to the preservation of mankind, increases our wishes to live, while she lessens our enjoyments, and as she robs the senses of every pleasure, equips imag-ination in the spoil?
Oliver Goldsmith
#71. Fancy restrained may be compared to a fountain, which plays highest by diminishing the aperture.
Oliver Goldsmith
#73. Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow, Or by the lazy Scheld or wandering Po.
Oliver Goldsmith
#75. I love everything that's old, - old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine.
Oliver Goldsmith
#76. Whatever be the motives which induce men to write,
whether avarice or fame,
the country becomes more wise and happy in which they most serve for instructors.
Oliver Goldsmith
#77. Taste is the power of relishing or rejecting whatever is offered for the entertainment of the imagination.
Oliver Goldsmith
#79. To aim at excellence, our reputation, and friends, and all must be ventured; to aim at the average we run no risk and provide little service.
Oliver Goldsmith
#81. Let observation with observant view,
Observe mankind from China to Peru.
Oliver Goldsmith
#82. Our pleasures are short, and can only charm at intervals; love is a method of protraction our greatest pleasure.
Oliver Goldsmith
#83. As writers become more numerous, it is natural for readers to become more indolent; whence must necessarily arise a desire of attaining knowledge with the greatest possible ease.
Oliver Goldsmith
#84. He who fights and runs away
May live to fight another day;
But he who is battle slain
Can never rise to fight again
Oliver Goldsmith
#86. Absence, like death, sets a seal on the image of those we love: we cannot realize the intervening changes which time may have effected.
Oliver Goldsmith
#87. True generosity is a duty as indispensably necessary as those imposed upon us by the law. It is a rule imposed upon us by reason, which should be the sovereign law of a rational being.
Oliver Goldsmith
#88. To husband out life's taper at the close, And keep the flames from wasting by repose.
Oliver Goldsmith
#90. The English laws punish vice; the Chinese laws do more, they reward virtue.
Oliver Goldsmith
#91. Good people all, with one accord, Lament for Madam Blaize, Who never wanted a good word From those who spoke her praise.
Oliver Goldsmith
#92. Blest be those feasts, with simple plenty crowned, Where all the ruddy family around Laugh at the jests or pranks that never fail Or sigh with pity at some mournful tale.
Oliver Goldsmith
#93. The best way to make your audience laugh is to start laughing yourself.
Oliver Goldsmith
#94. I have visited many countries, and have been in cities without number, yet never did I enter a town which could not produce ten or twelve little great men; all fancying themselves known to the rest of the world, and complimenting each other upon their extensive reputation.
Oliver Goldsmith
#96. Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey/Where wealth accumulates and men decay
Oliver Goldsmith
#100. One should not quarrel with a dog without a reason sufficient to vindicate one through all the courts of morality.
Oliver Goldsmith
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