Oliver Goldsmith Quotes
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Turn, gentle Hermit of the Dale,And guide my lonely wayTo where yon taper cheers the valeWith hospitable ray.
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The sigh that rends thy constant heartShall break thy Edwin's too.
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Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain.
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Conscience is a coward, and those faults it has not strength enough to prevent it seldom has justice enough to accuse.
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And what is friendship but a name,A charm that lulls to sleep,A shade that follows wealth or fame,And leaves the wretch to weep?
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To me more dear, congenial to my heart,One native charm, than all the gloss of art.
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One writer, for instance, excels at a plan or a title page, another works away at the body of the book, and a third is a dab at an index.
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The only art her guilt to cover,To hide her shame from every eye,To give repentance to her lover,And wring his bosom, is — to die.
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Silence gives consent.
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The best way to make your audience laugh is to start laughing yourself.
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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.
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They would talk of nothing but high life, and high-lived company, with other fashionable topics, such as pictures, taste, Shakespeare, and the musical glasses.
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The premises being thus settled, I proceed to observe that the concatenation of self-existence, proceeding in a reciprocal duplicate ratio, naturally produces a problematical dialogism, which in some measure proves that the essence of spirituality may be referred to the second predicable.
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Wept o'er his wounds, or tales of sorrow done,Shoulder'd his crutch, and shew'd how fields were won.
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Let us draw upon Content for the deficiencies of fortune.
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The whitewashed wall, the nicely sanded floor,The varnished clock that clicked behind the door;The chest contrived a double debt to pay,A bed by night, a chest of drawers by day.
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When lovely woman stoops to folly, and finds too late that men betray, what charm can soothe her melancholy, what art can wash her guilt away?
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Romance and novel paint beauty in colors more charming than nature, and describe a happiness that humans never taste. How deceptive and destructive are those pictures of consummate bliss!
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O Memory! thou fond deceiver.
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The canvas glow'd beyond ev'n Nature warm,The pregnant quarry teem'd with human form.
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Nothing is so contemptible as that affectation of wisdom, which some display, by universal incredulity.
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In my time, the follies of the town crept slowly among us, but now they travel faster than a stagecoach.
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Is it that Nature, attentive to the preservation of mankind, increases our wishes to live, while she lessens our enjoyments, and as she robs the senses of every pleasure, equips imag-ination in the spoil?
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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.