Oliver Goldsmith Quotes
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Travellers, George, must pay in all places: the only difference is, that in good inns, you pay dearly for your luxuries, and in bad inns you are fleeced and starved.
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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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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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The bashful virgin's sidelong looks of love,The matron's glance that would those looks reprove.
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The more various our artificial necessities, the wider is our circle of pleasure; for all pleasure consists in obviating necessities as they rise; luxury, therefore, as it increases our wants, increases our capacity for happiness
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To what happy accident is it that we owe so unexpected a visit?
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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.
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Politics resemble religion; attempting to divest either of ceremony is the most certain mode of bringing either into contempt.
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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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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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A book may be very amusing with numerous errors, or it may be very dull without a single absurdity.
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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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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.
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The very pink of perfection.
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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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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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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 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.
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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.
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We sometimes had those little rubs which Providence sends to enhance the value of its favors.
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Through torrid tracts with fainting steps they go,Where wild Altama murmurs to their woe.
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All his faults are such that one loves him still the better for them.
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How happy he who crowns in shades like these,A youth of labour with an age of ease.
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The genteel thing is the genteel thing any time, if as be that a gentleman bees in a concatenation accordingly.