Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Oliver Goldsmith

Quote by Oliver Goldsmith

“I armed her against the censures of the world, shewed her that books were sweet unreproaching companions to the miserable, and that if they could not bring us to enjoy life, they would at least teach us to endure it.”

Quote by Oliver Goldsmith

Book:The Vicar of Wakefield
Create image

Work

The Vicar of Wakefield

This eighteenth-century novel explores the trials and tribulations of a vicar and his family, depicting their journey through various life challenges and the enduring bonds of family love. more

Author

Oliver Goldsmith
Oliver Goldsmith

Oliver Goldsmith was an Irish novelist, playwright, poet, and physician. He is best known for his novel 'The Vicar of Wakefield' and his plays 'She Stoops to Conquer' and 'The Good-Natur'd Man'. Goldsmith's works are characterized by their wit, humor, and moral depth. more

You May Also Like

“For him that stealeth, or borroweth and returneth not, this book from its owner, Let it change into a serpent in his hand and rend him. Let him be struck with palsy and all his members blasted. Let him languish in pain crying out for mercy, Let there be no surcease to his agony till he sink in dissolution. Let bookworms gnaw his entrails in token of the worm that dieth not. When at last he goeth to his final punishment, Let the flames of Hell consume him forever. [attributed to the Monastery of San Pedro in Barcelona, Spain]”

BooksThievesLibrariesCurses
Book:A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books
Create image

“My mother, who would always buy her books new, hated it the vintage hardcovers with their cracked spines and threadbare cloth covers. True you couldn't go in there and buy the latest best seller, but when you held one of those volumes in your hands, you were leafing through another person'a life. Someone else had once loved that story, too. Someone else had carried that book in a backpack, devoured it over breakfast, mopped up that coffee stain at a Paris café, cried herself to sleep after that last chapter. The scent was distinctive: a slight damp mildew, a punch of dust. To me, it was the smell of history.”

HistoryBooksSmells
Book:The Storyteller
Create image

“But I can now understand why people read, why they like to get lost in somebody else's life. Sometimes I'll read a sentence and it will make me sit up, jolt me, because it is something that I have recently felt but never said out loud. I want to reach into the page and tell the characters that I understand them, that they're not alone, that I'm not alone, that it's ok to feel like this. And then the lunch bell rings, the book closes, and I'm plunged back into reality.”

ReadingBooksFlawedEscapeRelatable
Book:Flawed
Create image

“When I began writing The Night Bookmobile, it was a story about a woman's secret life as a reader. As I worked it also became a story about the claims that books place on their readers, the imbalance between our inner and outer lives, a cautionary tale of the seductions of the written word. It became a vision of the afterlife as a library, of heaven as a funky old camper filled with everything you've ever read. What is this heaven? What is it we desire from the hours, weeks, lifetimes we devote to books? What would you sacrifice to sit in that comfy chair with perfect light for an afternoon in eternity, reading the perfect book, forever?”

BooksReading Books
Book:The Night Bookmobile
Create image