“Life is a journey that must be traveled no matter how bad the roads and accommodations.”
“Conscience is a coward, and those faults it has not strength enough to prevent it seldom has justice enough to accuse.”
“Romance and novel paint beauty in colors more charming than nature, and describe a happiness that humans never taste. How deceptive and destructive are those pictures of consummate bliss!”
“When lovely woman stoops to folly, and finds too late that men betray, what charm can soothe her melancholy, what art can wash her guilt away?”
“Every absurdity has a champion to defend it.”
“Let schoolmasters puzzle their brain, With grammar, and nonsense, and learning, Good liquor, I stoutly maintain, Gives genius a better discerning.”
“The company of fools may first make us smile, but in the end we always feel melancholy.”
“People seldom improve when they have no other model but themselves to copy.”
Source: The Works of Oliver Goldsmith, M.B.: With a Life and Notes
“Honour sinks where commerce long prevails.”
Source: A History of the Earth: And Animated Nature
“Be not affronted at a joke. If one throw salt at thee, thou wilt receive no harm, unless thou art raw.”
“Hope is such a bait, it covers any hook.”
“I chose my wife, as she did her wedding gown, for qualities that would wear well.”
“On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting, 'Twas only when he was off, he was acting.”
“They say women and music should never be dated.”
Source: The Recruiting Officer. A Comedy
“I was ever of the opinion, that the honest man who married and brought up a large family, did more service than he who continued single, and only talked of population.”
“Philosophy ... should not pretend to increase our present stock, but make us economists of what we are possessed of.”
Source: Enquiry into the present state of polite learning. The citizen of the world
“To make a fine gentleman, several trades are required, but chiefly a barber.”
Source: The Miscellaneous Works of Oliver Goldsmith: Including a Variety of Pieces Now First Collected
“There is one way by which a strolling player may be ever secure of success; that is, in our theatrical way of expressing it, to make a great deal of the character. To speak and act as in common life is not playing, nor is it what people come to see; natural speaking, like sweet wine, runs glibly over the palate and scarcely leaves any taste behind it; but being high in a part resembles vinegar, which grates upon the taste, and one feels it while he is drinking.”
Source: The Works of Oliver Goldsmith: The bee. Essays. Unacknowledged essays. Prefaces, introductions, etc
“It has been well observed that few are better qualified to give others advice than those who have taken the least of it themselves.”
Source: The Works of Oliver Goldsmith: Comprising His Poems, Comedies, Essays, and Vicar of Wakefield
“Paltry affectation, strained allusions, and disgusting finery are easily attained by those who choose to wear them; they are but too frequently the badges of ignorance or of stupidity, whenever it would endeavor to please.”
Source: Letters From A Citizen Of The World: To His Friends In The East
“Is it that Nature, attentive to the preservation of mankind, increases our wishes to live, while she lessens our enjoyments, and as she robs the senses of every pleasure, equips imag-ination in the spoil?”
Source: The Miscellaneous Works of Oliver Goldsmith, M.B.: With Memoirs of His Life and Writings : Enriched with an Elegant Portrait of the Author
“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.”
Source: Works: With a Life and Notes
“An emperor in his nightcap will not meet with half the respect of an emperor with a crown.”
“The youth who follows his appetites too soon seizes the cup, before it has received its best ingredients, and by anticipating his pleasures, robs the remaining parts of life of their share, so that his eagerness only produces manhood of imbecility and an age of pain.”
Source: A History of the Earth, and Animated Nature
“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.”
“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.”
Source: The miscellaneous works of Oliver Goldsmith
“Aspiring beggary is wretchedness itself.”
Source: The Vicar of Wakefield
“While selfishness joins hands with no one of the virtues, benevolence is allied to them all.”
“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!”
Source: The works of Oliver Goldsmith: Vicar of Wakefield, select poems and comedies, with intr., notes and a life by J.F. Waller
“See me, how calm I am.
Ay, people are generally calm at the misfortunes of others.”
Source: Comedy of She Stoops to Conquer; Or, The Mistakes of a Night. By Dr. Goldsmith. Adapted for Theatrical Representation, as Performed at the Theatres-royal Covent-Garden and Drury-Lane ... with the Life of the Author, and a Critique, by R. Cumberland, Esq
“If the soul be happily disposed, every thing becomes capable of affording entertainment, and distress will almost want a name.”
Source: Poems and essays
“The sports of children satisfy the child.”
Source: The works of Oliver Goldsmith, ed. by P. Cunningham
“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.”
Source: An inquiry into the present state of polite learning. The Bee. History of Cyrillo Padovano. Life of Dr. Parnell. Life of Lord Bolingbroke. Prefaces and introductions
“Near yonder copse, where once the garden smil'd,
And still where many a garden flower grows wild,
There, where a few torn shrubs the place disclose,
The village preacher's modest mansion rose.
A man he was to all the country dear,
And passing rich with forty pounds a year;
Remote from town's he ran his godly race,
Nor e'er had chang'd nor wish'd to change his place;
Unskilful he to fawn, or seek for power,
By doctrines fashion'd to the varying hour;
Far other aims his heart had learn'd to prize.
More bent to raise the wretched than to rise.”
Source: The Miscellaneous Works: Poems. Miscellaneous pieces. Dramas. Criticism relating to poetry and the belles-lettres
“An Englishman fears contempt more than death.”
Source: Works: With a Life and Notes
“The bounds of a man's knowledge are easily concealed, if he has but prudence.”
Source: The miscellaneous works of Oliver Goldsmith
“It is impossible to combat enthusiasm with reason; for though it makes a show of resistance, it soon eludes the pressure, refers you to distinctions not to be understood, and feelings which it cannot explain. A man who would endeavor to fix an enthusiast by argument might as well attempt to spread quicksilver with his finger.”
Source: The Miscellaneous Works of Oliver Goldsmith, M. B.: Including a Variety of Pieces
“Ridicule has even been the most powerful enemy of enthusiasm, and properly the only antagonist that can be opposed to it with success.”
Source: The miscellaneous works of Oliver Goldsmith
“Error is ever talkative.”
Source: The Poetical Works ...: And The Vicar of Wakefield ...
“For the first time, the best may err, art may persuade, and novelty spread out its charms. The first fault is the child of simplicity; but every other the offspring of guilt.”
Source: The vicar of Wakefield, accentuirt mit Wörterbuche von K.R. Schaub
“Sweet was the sound, when oft, at evening's close,
Up yonder hill the village murmur rose;
There as I passed, with careless steps and slow,
The mingling notes came soften'd from below;
The swain responsive as the milkmaid sung,
The sober herd that low'd to meet their young;
The noisy geese that gabbled o'er the pool,
The playful children just let loose from school;
The watch-dog's voice that bay'd the whispering wind,
And the loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind;
These all in sweet confusion sought the shade,
And fill'd each pause the nightingale had made.”
“But me, not destined such delights to share,
My prime of life in wandering spent and care;
Impell'd, with steps unceasing, to pursue
Some fleeting good, that mocks me with the view
That, like the circle bounding earth and skies,
Allures from far, yet, as I follow, flies;
My fortune leads to traverse reams alone,
And find no spot of all the world my own.”
Source: Goldsmith's miscellaneous works
“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.”
Source: The Works of Oliver Goldsmith: Enquiry into the present state of polite learning. The citizen of the world
“Man little knows what calamities are beyond his patience to bear till he tries them; as in ascending the heights of ambition, which look bright from below, every step we rise shows us some new and gloomy prospect of hidden disappointment; so in our descent from the summits of pleasure, though the vale of misery below may appear, at first, dark and gloomy, yet the busy mind, still attentive to its own amusement, finds, as we descend, something to flatter and to please. Still as we approach, the darkest objects appear to brighten, and the mortal eye becomes adapted to its gloomy situation.”
Source: The Works of Oliver Goldsmith: Poetical works. Dramas. The vicar of Wakefield
“Fancy restrained may be compared to a fountain, which plays highest by diminishing the aperture.”
Source: Letters from a citizen of the world, to his friends in the East
“For praise too dearly lov'd, or warmly sought,
Enfeebles all internal strength of thought;
And the weak soul within itself unblest,
Leans for all pleasure on another's breast.”
Source: Essays, poems and plays
“The folly of others is ever most ridiculous to those who are themselves most foolish.”
Source: The miscellaneous works of Oliver Goldsmith
“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.”
Source: The vicar of Wakefield, poems, and essays
“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.”
Source: The Miscellaneous Works: Letters from a citizen of the world, to his friend in the East. A familiar introduction to the study of natural history
“True generosity is a duty as indispensably necessary as those imposed upon us by the law. It is a rule imposed upon us by reason, which should be the sovereign law of a rational being.”
Source: The works of Oliver Goldsmith, ed. by P. Cunningham
