Oliver Goldsmith Quotes

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There is unspeakable pleasure attending the life of a voluntary student.

Oliver Goldsmith
Whichever way we look the prospect is disagreeable. Behind, we have left pleasures we shall never enjoy, and therefore regret; and before, we see pleasures which we languish to possess, and are consequently uneasy till we possess them.

Oliver Goldsmith
I have found by experience that they who have spent all their lives in cities contract not only an effeminacy of habit, but of thinking.

Oliver Goldsmith
True genius walks along a line, and, perhaps, our greatest pleasure is in seeing it so often near falling, without being ever actually down.

Oliver Goldsmith
A boy will learn more true wisdom in a public school in a year than by a private education in five. It is not from masters, but from their equals, that youth learn a knowledge of the world.

Oliver Goldsmith
How blest is he who crowns in shades like these A youth of labour with an age of ease!

Oliver Goldsmith
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.

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

Oliver Goldsmith
Eternal blessings crown my earliest friend,
And round his dwelling guardian saints attend.

Oliver Goldsmith
Titles and mottoes to books are like escutcheons and dignities in the hands of a king. The wise sometimes condescend to accept of them; but none but a fool would imagine them of any real importance. We ought to depend upon intrinsic merit, and not the slender helps of the title.

Oliver Goldsmith
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.

Oliver Goldsmith
You, that are going to be married, think things can never be done too fast: but we that are old, and know what we are about, must elope methodically, madam.

Oliver Goldsmith
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.

Oliver Goldsmith
Friendship is made up of esteem and pleasure; pity is composed of sorrow and contempt: the mind may for some time fluctuate between them, but it can never entertain both at once.

Oliver Goldsmith
I learn several great truths; as that it is impossible to see into the ways of futurity, that punishment always attends the villain, that love is the fond soother of the human breast.

Oliver Goldsmith