Oliver Goldsmith Quotes
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Who mix'd reason with pleasure, and wisdom with mirth:If he had any faults, he has left us in doubt.
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Cheerful at morn, he wakes from short repose,Breasts the keen air, and carols as he goes.
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A man he was to all the country dear,And passing rich with forty pounds a year.
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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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Who peppered the highest was surest to please.
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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.
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Pride in their port, defiance in their eye,I see the lords of humankind pass by.
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Bends to the grave with unperceived decay,While resignation gently slopes the way;And, all his prospects brightening to the last,His heaven commences ere the world be past.
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We sometimes had those little rubs which Providence sends to enhance the value of its favors.
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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.
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Life has been compared to a race, but the allusion improves by observing, that the most swift are usually the least manageable and the most likely to stray from the course. Great abilities have always been less serviceable to the possessors than moderate ones.
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The first blow is half the battle.
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A book may be very amusing with numerous errors, or it may be very dull without a single absurdity.
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The wisdom of the ignorant somewhat resembles the instinct of animals; it is diffused in but a very narrow sphere, but within the circle it acts with vigor, uniformity, and success.
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The twelve good rules, the royal game of goose.
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This same philosophy is a good horse in the stable, but an arrant jade on a journey.
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To the last moment of his breathOn hope the wretch relies;And e'en the pang preceding deathBids expectation rise.
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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.
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She who makes her husband and her children happy, who reclaims the one from vice, and trains up the other to virtue, is a much greater character than the ladies described in romance, whose whole occupation is to murder mankind with shafts from their quiver or their eyes.
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Our chief comforts often produce our greatest anxieties, and the increase in our possessions is but an inlet to new disquietudes.
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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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Where'er I roam, whatever realms I see,My heart untraveled fondly turns to thee;Still to my brother turns with ceaseless pain,And drags at each remove a lengthening chain.
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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.
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To what happy accident is it that we owe so unexpected a visit?