Oliver Goldsmith Quotes

255 Sourced Quotes

Friendship is a disinterested commerce between equals; love, an abject intercourse between tyrants and slaves.

Oliver Goldsmith
Our greatest glory is, not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.

Oliver Goldsmith
People seldom improve when they have no other model but themselves to copy.

Oliver Goldsmith
Philosophy can add to our happiness in no other manner but by diminishing our misery; it should not pretend to increase our present stock, but make us economists of what we are possessed of. Happy were we all born philosophers; all born with a talent of thus dissipating our own cares by spreading them upon all mankind.

Oliver Goldsmith
Let schoolmasters puzzle their brain,
With grammar, and nonsense, and learning;
Good liquor, I stoutly maintain,
Gives genus a better discerning.

Oliver Goldsmith
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.

Oliver Goldsmith
In two opposite opinions, if one be perfectly reasonable, the other can't be perfectly right.

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

Oliver Goldsmith
Thus 'tis with all; their chief and constant care Is to seem everything but what they are.

Oliver Goldsmith
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
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
Human curiosity, though at first slowly excited, being at last possessed of leisure for indulging its propensity, becomes one of the greatest amusements of life, and gives higher satisfactions than what even the senses can afford.

Oliver Goldsmith
In a polite age almost every person becomes a reader, and receives more instruction from the Press than the Pulpit.

Oliver Goldsmith
Fine declamation does not consist in flowery periods, delicate allusions of musical cadences, but in a plain, open, loose style, where the periods are long and obvious, where the same thought is often exhibited in several points of view.

Oliver Goldsmith
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
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.

Oliver Goldsmith
As aromatic plants bestow No spicy fragrance while they grow; But crushed or trodden to the ground Diffuse their balmy sweets around.

Oliver Goldsmith
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.

Oliver Goldsmith
Politics resemble religion; attempting to divest either of ceremony is the most certain mode of bringing either into contempt.

Oliver Goldsmith
But times are alter'd; trade's unfeeling train
Usurp the land, and dispossess the swain;
Along the lawn, where scatter'd hamlets rose,
Unwieldy wealth and cumbrous pomp repose.

Oliver Goldsmith
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.

Oliver Goldsmith
The more various our artificial necessities, the wider is our circle of pleasure; for all pleasure consists in obviating necessities as they rise; luxury, therefore, as it increases our wants, increases our capacity for happiness

Oliver Goldsmith
But me, not destined such delights to share,
My prime of life in wandering spent and care;
Impell'd, with steps unceasing, to pursue
Some fleeting good, that mocks me with the view
That, like the circle bounding earth and skies,
Allures from far, yet, as I follow, flies;
My fortune leads to traverse reams alone,
And find no spot of all the world my own.

Oliver Goldsmith
To husband out life's taper at the close, And keep the flames from wasting by repose.

Oliver Goldsmith
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.

Oliver Goldsmith
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.

Oliver Goldsmith
If we do not find happiness in the present moment, in what shall we find it?

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

Oliver Goldsmith
Paltry affectation, strained allusions, and disgusting finery are easily attained by those who choose to wear them; they are but too frequently the badges of ignorance or of stupidity, whenever it would endeavor to please.

Oliver Goldsmith
There is yet a silent agony in which the mind appears to disdain all external help, and broods over its distresses with gloomy reserve. This is the most dangerous state of mind; accidents or friendships may lessen the louder kinds of grief, but all remedies for this must be had from within, and there despair too often finds the most deadly enemy.

Oliver Goldsmith