Oliver Goldsmith Quotes
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The first blow is half the battle.
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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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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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A modest woman, dressed out in all her finery, is the most tremendous object of the whole creation.
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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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The genteel thing is the genteel thing any time, if as be that a gentleman bees in a concatenation accordingly.
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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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All his faults are such that one loves him still the better for them.
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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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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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Through torrid tracts with fainting steps they go,Where wild Altama murmurs to their woe.
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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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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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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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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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Ask me no questions, and I'll tell you no fibs.
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In all the silent manliness of grief.
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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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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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Friendship is made up of esteem and pleasure; pity is composed of sorrow and contempt: the mind may for some time fluctuate between them, but it can never entertain both at once.
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Whichever way we look the prospect is disagreeable. Behind, we have left pleasures we shall never enjoy, and therefore regret; and before, we see pleasures which we languish to possess, and are consequently uneasy till we possess them.