Oliver Goldsmith - Mind Quotes

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A mind too vigorous and active, serves only to consume the body to which it is joined.

Oliver Goldsmith
As for disappointing them I should not so much mind; but I can't abide to disappoint myself.

Oliver Goldsmith
Here lies our good Edmund, whose genius was such,
We scarcely can praise it, or blame it too much;
Who, born for the universe, narrow'd his mind,
And to party gave up what was meant for mankind;
Though fraught with all learning, yet straining his throat
To persuade Tommy Townshend to lend him a vote.
Who too deep for his hearers still went on refining,
And thought of convincing while they thought of dining:
Though equal to all things, for all things unfit;
Too nice for a statesman, too proud for a wit.

Oliver Goldsmith
To men of other minds my fancy flies,
Embosomed in the deep where Holland lies.
Methinks her patient sons before me stand,
Where the broad ocean leans against the land.

Oliver Goldsmith
The watchdog's voice that bayed the whispering wind,
And the loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind.

Oliver Goldsmith
Vain, very vain, my weary search to find
That bliss which only centers in the mind.

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
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
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
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
Processions, cavalcades, and all that fund of gay frippery, furnished out by tailors, barbers, and tire-women, mechanically influence the mind into veneration; an emperor in his nightcap would not meet with half the respect of an emperor with a crown.

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