Her modest looks the cottage might adorn, Sweet as the primrose peeps beneath the thorn.
Oliver GoldsmithTo 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 GoldsmithIf the soul be happily disposed, every thing becomes capable of affording entertainment, and distress will almost want a name.
Oliver GoldsmithEvery acknowledgment of gratitude is a circumstance of humiliation; and some are found to submit to frequent mortifications of this kind, proclaiming what obligations they owe, merely because they think it in some measure cancels the debt.
Oliver GoldsmithI love everything that's old, - old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine.
Oliver GoldsmithMan little knows what calamities are beyond his patience to bear till he tries them; as in ascending the heights of ambition, which look bright from below, every step we rise shows us some new and gloomy prospect of hidden disappointment; so in our descent from the summits of pleasure, though the vale of misery below may appear, at first, dark and gloomy, yet the busy mind, still attentive to its own amusement, finds, as we descend, something to flatter and to please. Still as we approach, the darkest objects appear to brighten, and the mortal eye becomes adapted to its gloomy situation.
Oliver Goldsmith