Oliver Goldsmith Quotes
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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 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.
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To what happy accident is it that we owe so unexpected a visit?
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The very pink of perfection.
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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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One should not quarrel with a dog without a reason sufficient to vindicate one through all the courts of morality.
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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 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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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 genteel thing is the genteel thing any time, if as be that a gentleman bees in a concatenation accordingly.
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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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Politics resemble religion; attempting to divest either of ceremony is the most certain mode of bringing either into contempt.
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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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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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The first blow is half the battle.
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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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I can't say whether we had more wit among us now than usual, but I am certain we had more laughing, which answered the end as well.
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A modest woman, dressed out in all her finery, is the most tremendous object of the whole creation.
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We sometimes had those little rubs which Providence sends to enhance the value of its favors.
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All his faults are such that one loves him still the better for them.
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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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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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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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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.