Oliver Goldsmith Quotes

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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
Taste is the power of relishing or rejecting whatever is offered for the entertainment of the imagination.

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
And the weak soul, within itself unbless'd, Leans for all pleasure on another's breast.

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

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

Oliver Goldsmith
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
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
Fancy restrained may be compared to a fountain, which plays highest by diminishing the aperture.

Oliver Goldsmith
In proportion as society refines, new books must ever become more necessary.

Oliver Goldsmith
Solo natura subest - out of the soil comes life; and in the greenness of the earth is man's redemption.

Oliver Goldsmith
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.

Oliver Goldsmith
This is that eloquence the ancients represented as lightning, bearing down every opposer; this the power which has turned whole assemblies into astonishment, admiration and awe- - that is described by the torrent, the flame, and every other instance of irresistible impetuosity.

Oliver Goldsmith
The bounds of a man's knowledge are easily concealed, if he has but prudence.

Oliver Goldsmith
Could a man live by it, it were not unpleasant employment to be a poet.

Oliver Goldsmith
One man is born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and the other with a wooden ladle.

Oliver Goldsmith
I have known a German Prince with more titles than subjects, and a Spanish nobleman with more names than shirts.

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

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

Oliver Goldsmith
Popular glory is a perfect coquette; her lovers must toil, feel every inquietude, indulge every caprice, and perhaps at last be jilted into the bargain. True glory, on the other hand, resembles a woman of sense; her admirers must play no tricks. They feel no great anxiety, for they are sure in the end of being rewarded in proportion to their merit.

Oliver Goldsmith
Thus love is the most easy and agreeable, and gratitude the most humiliating, affection of the mind. We never reflect on the man we love without exulting in our choice, while he who has bound us to him by benefits alone rises to our ideas as a person to whom we have in some measure forfeited our freedom.

Oliver Goldsmith
Alas! the joys that fortune brings
Are trifling, and decay,
And those who prize the trifling things,
More trifling still than they.

Oliver Goldsmith
There are but few talents requisite to become a popular preacher; for the people are easily pleased if they perceive any endeavors in the orator to please them. The meanest qualifications will work this effect if the preacher sincerely sets about it.

Oliver Goldsmith