Oliver Goldsmith - Man Quotes

24 Sourced Quotes

View all Oliver Goldsmith Quotes
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
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
Like the tiger, that seldom desists from pursuing man after having once preyed upon human flesh, the reader who has once gratified his appetite with calumny makes ever after the most agreeable feast upon murdered reputations!

Oliver Goldsmith
A man's own heart must ever be given to gain that of another.

Oliver Goldsmith
Blame where you must, be candid where you can, And be each critic the Good-natured Man.

Oliver Goldsmith
I fancy the character of a poet is in every country the same,--fond of enjoying the present, careless of the future; his conversation that of a man of sense, his actions those of a fool.

Oliver Goldsmith
The world may be considered as one vast mansion, where man has been admitted to enjoy, to admire, and to be grateful.

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

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

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

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

Oliver Goldsmith
Why was this heart of mine formed with so much sensibility! Or why not my fortune adapted to its impulses! Tenderness without a capacity of relieving only makes the man who feels it more wretched than the object which sues for assistance.

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

Oliver Goldsmith
The greatest object in the universe, says a certain philosopher, is a good man struggling with adversity; yet there is still a greater, which is the good man who comes to relieve it.

Oliver Goldsmith
Even children followed with endearing wile,
And plucked his gown, to share the good man's smile.

Oliver Goldsmith
A man he was to all the country dear,
And passing rich with forty pounds a year.
Remote from towns he ran his godly race,
Nor e'er had changed nor wished to change his place.

Oliver Goldsmith
The man recovered of the bite,
The dog it was that died.

Oliver Goldsmith
The dog, to gain some private ends,
Went mad, and bit the man.

Oliver Goldsmith
Men may be very learned, and yet very miserable; it is easy to be a deep geometrician, or a sublime astronomer, but very difficult to be a good man. I esteem, therefore, the traveller who instructs the heart, but despise him who only indulges the imagination. A man who leaves home to mend himself and others, is a philosopher; but he who goes from country to country, guided by the blind impulse of curiosity, is only a vagabond.

Oliver Goldsmith
The best-humour'd man, with the worst-humour'd Muse.

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

Oliver Goldsmith
A man severe he was, and stern to view;
I knew him well, and every truant knew:
Well had the boding tremblers learned to trace
The day's disasters in his morning face;
Full well they laughed with counterfeited glee,
At all his jokes, for many a joke had he;
Full well the bust whisper, circling round,
Conveyed the dismal tidings when he frowned;
Yet he was kind; or if severe in aught,
The love he bore to learning was in fault;
The village all declared how much he knew;
'Twas certain he could write, and cipher too.

Oliver Goldsmith