Oliver Goldsmith Quotes
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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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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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The first time I read an excellent book, it is to me just as if I had gained a new friend. When I read a book over I have perused before, it resembles the meeting with an old one.
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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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True genius walks along a line, and, perhaps, our greatest pleasure is in seeing it so often near falling, without being ever actually down.
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As boys should be educated with temperance, so the first greatest lesson that should be taught them is to admire frugality. It is by the exercise of this virtue alone they can ever expect to be useful members of society.
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Why was this heart of mine formed with so much sensibility! Or why not my fortune adapted to its impulses! Tenderness without a capacity of relieving only makes the man who feels it more wretched than the object which sues for assistance.
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Our pleasures are short, and can only charm at intervals; love is a method of protraction our greatest pleasure.
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Both wit and understanding are trifles without integrity; it is that which gives value to every character. The ignorant peasant, without fault, is greater than the philosopher with many; for what is genius or courage without a heart?
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As few subjects are more interesting to society, so few have been more frequently written upon than the education of youth.
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I have visited many countries, and have been in cities without number, yet never did I enter a town which could not produce ten or twelve little great men; all fancying themselves known to the rest of the world, and complimenting each other upon their extensive reputation.
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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.
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The person whose clothes are extremely fine I am too apt to consider as not being possessed of any superiority of fortune, but resembling those Indians who are found to wear all the gold they have in the world in a bob at the nose.
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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.
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Whatever the skill of any country may be in the sciences, it is from its excellence in polite learning alone that it must expect a character from posterity.
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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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It has been well observed that few are better qualified to give others advice than those who have taken the least of it themselves.
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Philosophy can add to our happiness in no other manner but by diminishing our misery; it should not pretend to increase our present stock, but make us economists of what we are possessed of. Happy were we all born philosophers; all born with a talent of thus dissipating our own cares by spreading them upon all mankind.
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To aim at excellence, our reputation, and friends, and all must be ventured; to aim at the average we run no risk and provide little service.
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Like the tiger, that seldom desists from pursuing man after having once preyed upon human flesh, the reader who has once gratified his appetite with calumny makes ever after the most agreeable feast upon murdered reputations!
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Every acknowledgment of gratitude is a circumstance of humiliation; and some are found to submit to frequent mortifications of this kind, proclaiming what obligations they owe, merely because they think it in some measure cancels the debt.
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Titles and mottoes to books are like escutcheons and dignities in the hands of a king. The wise sometimes condescend to accept of them; but none but a fool would imagine them of any real importance. We ought to depend upon intrinsic merit, and not the slender helps of the title.
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There is nothing magnanimous in bearing misfortunes with fortitude, when the whole world is looking on.... He who, without friends to encourage or even without hope to alleviate his misfortunes, can behave with tranquility and indifference, is truly great.
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Absence, like death, sets a seal on the image of those we love: we cannot realize the intervening changes which time may have effected.