Oliver Goldsmith Quotes
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Through torrid tracts with fainting steps they go,Where wild Altama murmurs to their woe.
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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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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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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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A flattering painter, who made it his careTo draw men as they ought to be, not as they are.
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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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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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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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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 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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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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In all the silent manliness of grief.
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Whenever you see a gaming table be sure to know fortune is not there. Rather she is always in the company of industry.
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Ask me no questions, and I'll tell you no fibs.
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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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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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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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I have known a German Prince with more titles than subjects, and a Spanish nobleman with more names than shirts.
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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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Ridicule has always been the enemy of enthusiasm, and the only worthy opponent to ridicule is success.
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The volumes of antiquity, like medals, may very well serve to amuse the curious, but the works of the moderns, like the current coin of a kingdom, are much better for immediate use.
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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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A traveler of taste will notice that the wise are polite all over the world, but the fool only at home.