Quotes By Oliver Goldsmith

Modesty seldom resides in a breast that is not enriched with nobler virtues.

Life is a journey that must be traveled no matter how bad the roads and accommodations.

Honour sinks where commerce long prevails.

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!

The best way to make your audience laugh is to start laughing yourself.

If you were to make little fishes talk, they would talk like whales.

The hours we pass with happy prospects in view are more pleasing than those crowded with fruition.

Hope is such a bait, it covers any hook.

Let schoolmasters puzzle their brain, With grammar, and nonsense, and learning, Good liquor, I stoutly maintain, Gives genius a better discerning.

Pity and friendship are two passions incompatible with each other.

A great source of calamity lies in regret and anticipation; therefore a person is wise who thinks of the present alone, regardless of the past or future.

Surely the best way to meet the enemy is head on in the field and not wait till they plunder our very homes.

Ceremonies are different in every country, but true politeness is everywhere the same.

The company of fools may first make us smile, but in the end we always feel melancholy.

Success consists of getting up just one more time than you fall.

They say women and music should never be dated.

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?

Where wealth accumulates, men decay.

Tenderness is a virtue.

People seldom improve when they have no other model but themselves to copy.

With disadvantages enough to bring him to humility, a Scotsman is one of the proudest things alive.

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.

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.

Man wants but little here below, nor wants that little long.

On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting, 'Twas only when he was off, he was acting.

Girls like to be played with, and rumpled a little too, sometimes.

I chose my wife, as she did her wedding gown, for qualities that would wear well.

Every absurdity has a champion to defend it.

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.

All that a husband or wife really wants is to be pitied a little, praised a little, and appreciated a little.