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Who peppered the highest was surest to please.
Oliver Goldsmith -
To the last moment of his breathOn hope the wretch relies;And e'en the pang preceding deathBids expectation rise.
Oliver Goldsmith
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All his faults are such that one loves him still the better for them.
Oliver Goldsmith -
The bashful virgin's sidelong looks of love,The matron's glance that would those looks reprove.
Oliver Goldsmith -
The land of scholars and the nurse of arms.
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 -
How happy he who crowns in shades like these,A youth of labour with an age of ease.
Oliver Goldsmith -
A modest woman, dressed out in all her finery, is the most tremendous object of the whole creation.
Oliver Goldsmith
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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.
Oliver Goldsmith -
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.
Oliver Goldsmith -
The first blow is half the battle.
Oliver Goldsmith -
We sometimes had those little rubs which Providence sends to enhance the value of its favors.
Oliver Goldsmith -
The polite of every country seem to have but one character. A gentleman of Sweden differs but little, except in trifles, from one of any other country. It is among the vulgar we are to find those distinctions which characterize a people.
Oliver Goldsmith -
In a polite age almost every person becomes a reader, and receives more instruction from the Press than the Pulpit.
Oliver Goldsmith
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Politics resemble religion; attempting to divest either of ceremony is the most certain mode of bringing either into contempt.
Oliver Goldsmith -
Pity, though it may often relieve, is but, at best, a short-lived passion, and seldom affords distress more than transitory assistance; with some it scarce lasts from the first impulse till the hand can be put into the pocket.
Oliver Goldsmith -
Through torrid tracts with fainting steps they go,Where wild Altama murmurs to their woe.
Oliver Goldsmith -
And, as a bird each fond endearment triesTo tempt its new-fledged offspring to the skies,He tried each art, reproved each dull delay,Allured to brighter worlds, and led the way.
Oliver Goldsmith -
The little mind who loves itself, will wr'te and think with the vulgar; but the great mind will be bravely eccentric, and scorn the beaten road, from universal benevolence.
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
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If frugality were established in the state, and if our expenses were laid out to meet needs rather than superfluities of life, there might be fewer wants, and even fewer pleasures, but infinitely more happiness.
Oliver Goldsmith -
One should not quarrel with a dog without a reason sufficient to vindicate one through all the courts of morality.
Oliver Goldsmith -
In all the silent manliness of grief.
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