Oliver Goldsmith Quotes

Embosom'd in the deep where Holland lies. Methinks her patient sons before me stand, Where the broad ocean leans against the land.

The mind is ever ingenious in making its own distress.

The heart of every man lies open to the shafts of correction if the archer can take proper aim.

The company of fools may first make us smile, but in the end we always feel melancholy.

Quality and title have such allurements that hundreds are ready to give up all their own importance, to cringe, to flatter, to look little, and to pall every pleasure in constraint, merely to be among the great, though without the least hopes of improving their understanding or sharing their generosity. They might be happier among their equals.

Every 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.

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.

Absence, like death, sets a seal on the image of those we love: we cannot realize the intervening changes which time may have effected.

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.

There is nothing so absurd or ridiculous that has not at some time been said by some philosopher.

The polite of every country seem to have but one character. A gentleman of Sweden differs but little, except in trifles, from one of any other country. It is among the vulgar we are to find those distinctions which characterize a people.

Blest that abode, where want and pain repair, And every stranger finds a ready chair.

While Resignation gently slopes away, And all his prospects brightening to the last, His heaven commences ere the world be past.

And fools who came to scoff remain'd to pray.

I chose my wife, as she did her wedding gown, for qualities that would wear well.

The way to acquire lasting esteem is not by the fewness of a writer's faults, but the greatness of his beauties, and our noblest works are generally most replete with both.

Honour sinks where commerce long prevails.

The best way to make your audience laugh is to start laughing yourself.

Write how you want, the critic shall show the world you could have written better.

The pictures placed for ornament and use, The twelve good rules, the royal game of goose.

When lovely woman stoops to folly, and finds too late that men betray, what charm can soothe her melancholy, what art can wash her guilt away?

All the sciences are, in some measure, linked with each other, and before the one is ended, the other begins.

The fortunate circumstances of our lives are generally found, at last, to be of our own producing.

A French woman is a perfect architect in dress: she never, with Gothic ignorance, mixes the orders; she never tricks out a snobby Doric shape with Corinthian finery; or, to speak without metaphor, she conforms to general fashion only when it happens not to be repugnant to private beauty.

To make a fine gentleman, several trades are required, but chiefly a barber.

To be poor, and to seem poor, is a certain method never to rise.

O friendship! thou fond soother of the human breast, to thee we fly in every calamity; to thee the wretched seek for succor; on thee the care-tired son of misery fondly relies; from thy kind assistance the unfortunate always hopes relief, and may be sure of--disappointment.

Conscience is a coward, and those faults it has not strength enough to prevent it seldom has justice enough to accuse.

Both wit and understanding are trifles without integrity.

Don't let us make imaginary evils, when you know we have so many real ones to encounter.

Pity, though it may often relieve, is but, at best, a short-lived passion, and seldom affords distress more than transitory assistance; with some it scarce lasts from the first impulse till the hand can be put into the pocket.

Our chief comforts often produce our greatest anxieties, and the increase in our possessions is but an inlet to new disquietudes.

A volcano may be considered as a cannon of immense size.

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.

The soul may be compared to a field of battle, where the armies are ready every moment to encounter. Not a single vice but has a more powerful opponent, and not one virtue but may be overborne by a combination of vices.

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.

It world be well had we more misers than we have among us.

A traveler of taste will notice that the wise are polite all over the world, but the fool only at home.

Man wants but little here below, Nor wants that little long.

Unequal combinations are always disadvantageous to the weaker side.

He cast off his friends as a huntsman his pack, For he knew when he pleas'd he could whistle them back.

Well had the boding tremblers learn'd to trace The day's disasters in his morning face; Full well they laugh'd with counterfeited glee At all his jokes, for many a joke had he; Full well the busy whisper circling round Convey'd the dismal tidings when he frown'd. Yet was he kind, or if severe in aught, The love he bore to learning was in fault; The village all declar'd how much he knew, 'Twas certain he could write and cipher too.

The hours we pass with happy prospects in view are more pleasing than those crowded with fruition.

A man he was to all the country dear, And passing rich with forty pounds a year.

Here let me sit in sorrow for mankind.

The Europeans are themselves blind who describe fortune without sight. No first-rate beauty ever had finer eyes, or saw more clearly. They who have no other trade but seeking their fortune need never hope to find her; coquette-like, she flies from her close pursuers, and at last fixes on the plodding mechanic who stays at home and minds his business.

It has been remarked that almost every character which has excited either attention or pity has owed part of its success to merit, and part to a happy concurrence of circumstances in its favor. Had Caesar or Cromwell exchanged countries, the one might have been a sergeant and the other an exciseman.

The work of eradicating crimes is not by making punishment familiar, but formidable.