Oliver Goldsmith Quotes

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

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

Oliver Goldsmith
How wide the limits stand
Between a splendid and a happy land.

Oliver Goldsmith
They please, are pleased, they give to get esteem,
Till, seeming blest, they grow to what they seem.

Oliver Goldsmith
Careless their merits or their faults to scan,
His pity gave ere charity began.
Thus to relieve the wretched was his pride,
And e'en his failings leaned to Virtue's side.

Oliver Goldsmith
All is not gold that glitters,
Pleasure seems sweet, but proves a glass of bitters

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

Oliver Goldsmith
[To Mr. Johnson] If you were to make little fishes talk, they would talk like whales.

Oliver Goldsmith
A nightcap decked his brows instead of bay,
A cap by night — a stocking all the day!

Oliver Goldsmith
Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain.

Oliver Goldsmith
A book may be very amusing with numerous errors, or it may be very dull without a single absurdity.

Oliver Goldsmith
He cast off his friends as a huntsman his pack,
For he knew when he pleased he could whistle them back.

Oliver Goldsmith
To a philosopher no circumstance, however trifling, is too minute.

Oliver Goldsmith
Here lies David Garrick, describe me, who can,
An abridgment of all that was pleasant in man.

Oliver Goldsmith
I... chose a wife, as she did her wedding gown, not for a fine glossy surface, but such qualities as would wear well.

Oliver Goldsmith
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
Good people all, with one accord,
Lament for Madame Blaize,
Who never wanted a good word —
From those who spoke her praise.

Oliver Goldsmith
In arguing too, the parson owned his skill,
For e'en though vanquished, he could argue still;
While words of learned length, and thundering sound
Amazed the gazing rustics ranged around;
And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew,
That one small head could carry all he knew.

Oliver Goldsmith
I find you want me to furnish you with argument and intellects too.

Oliver Goldsmith
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
Life has been compared to a race, but the allusion improves by observing, that the most swift are usually the least manageable and the most likely to stray from the course. Great abilities have always been less serviceable to the possessors than moderate ones.

Oliver Goldsmith
It is a species of painting with words, in which the figures are happily conceived, ingeniously arranged, affectingly expressed, and recommended with all the warmth and harmony of coloring.

Oliver Goldsmith
Our pleasures are short, and can only charm at intervals; love is a method of protraction our greatest pleasure.

Oliver Goldsmith
It has been a thousand times observed, and I must observe it once more, that the hours we pass with happy prospects in view are more pleasing than those crowned with fruition.

Oliver Goldsmith
He calls his extravagance, generosity; and his trusting everybody, universal benevolence.

Oliver Goldsmith
That virtue which requires to be ever guarded is scarce worth the sentinel.

Oliver Goldsmith
Thus let me hold thee to my heart,
And every care resign:
And we shall never, never part,
My life-my all that's mine!

Oliver Goldsmith
Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay;
Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade;
A breath can make them, as a breath has made;
But a bold peasantry, their country's pride,
When once destroyed, can never be supplied.

Oliver Goldsmith