Quotes by Oliver Goldsmith
For he that fights and runs away, may live to fight another day, but he, who is in battle slain, can never rise and fight again.
The loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind.
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.
As writers become more numerous, it is natural for readers to become more indolent; whence must necessarily arise a desire of attaining knowledge with the greatest possible ease.
Ridicule has always been the enemy of enthusiasm, and the only worthy opponent to ridicule is success.
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.
The mind is ever ingenious in making its own distress.
Well had the boding tremblers learned to trace the day's disasters in his morning face.
Fortune is ever seen accompanying industry.
A man who leaves home to mend himself and others is a philosopher; but he who goes from country to country, guided by the blind impulse of curiosity, is a vagabond.
Let school-masters puzzle their brain. With grammar, and nonsense, and learning;...
The best way to make your audience laugh is to start laughing yourself.
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!
Truth from his lips prevailed with double sway, and fools, who came to scoff, remained to pray.
I love everything that's old: old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wines; and, I believe, Dorothy, you'll own I have been pretty fond of an old wife.
In all the silent manliness of grief.
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.
The English laws punish vice; the Chinese laws do more, they reward virtue.
Law grinds the poor, and rich men rule the law.
The hours that we pass with happy prospects in view are more pleasing than those crowned with success.
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.
I can't say whether we had more wit among us now than usual, but I am certain we had more laughing, which answered the end as well.
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.
If one wishes to become rich they must appear rich.
I have known a German Prince with more titles than subjects, and a Spanish nobleman with more names than shirts.
