Oliver Goldsmith Quotes
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When any one of our relations was found to be a person of a very bad character, a troublesome guest, or one we desired to get rid of, upon his leaving my house I ever took care to lend him a riding-coat, or a pair of boots, or sometimes a horse of small value, and I always had the satisfaction of finding he never came back to return them.
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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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The genteel thing is the genteel thing any time, if as be that a gentleman bees in a concatenation accordingly.
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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 way to acquire lasting esteem is not by the fewness of a writer's faults, but the greatness of his beauties, and our noblest works are generally most replete with both.
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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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Life at the greatest and best is but a froward child, that must be humored and coaxed a little till it falls asleep, and then all the care is over.
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A flattering painter, who made it his careTo draw men as they ought to be, not as they are.
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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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Were I to be angry at men being fools, I could here find ample room for declamation; but, alas! I have been a fool myself; and why should I be angry with them for being something so natural to every child of humanity?
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Whatever be the motives which induce men to write,--whether avarice or fame,--the country becomes more wise and happy in which they most serve for instructors.
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The world is like a vast sea: mankind like a vessel sailing on its tempestuous bosom. ... [T]he sciences serve us for oars.
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As for murmurs, mother, we grumble a little now and then, to be sure; but there's no love lost between us.
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Whatever mitigates the woes, or increases the happiness of others, is a just criterion of goodness; and whatever injures society at large, or any individual in it, is a criterion of iniquity.
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You will always find that those are most apt to boast of national merit, who have little or not merit of their own to depend on . . .
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I learn several great truths; as that it is impossible to see into the ways of futurity, that punishment always attends the villain, that love is the fond soother of the human breast.
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Fine declamation does not consist in flowery periods, delicate allusions of musical cadences, but in a plain, open, loose style, where the periods are long and obvious, where the same thought is often exhibited in several points of view.
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Ask me no questions, and I'll tell you no fibs.
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The soul may be compared to a field of battle, where the armies are ready every moment to encounter. Not a single vice but has a more powerful opponent, and not one virtue but may be overborne by a combination of vices.
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In all the silent manliness of grief.
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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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Ridicule has always been the enemy of enthusiasm, and the only worthy opponent to ridicule is success.
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Blest be those feasts, with simple plenty crowned, Where all the ruddy family around Laugh at the jests or pranks that never fail Or sigh with pity at some mournful tale.