Quotes By Oliver Goldsmith

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

I love everything that's old, - old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine.

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

They say women and music should never be dated.

Write how you want, the critic shall show the world you could have written better.

There are some faults so nearly allied to excellence that we can scarce weed out the vice without eradicating the virtue.

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.

Friendship is a disinterested commerce between equals; love, an abject intercourse between tyrants and slaves.

Be not affronted at a joke. If one throw salt at thee, thou wilt receive no harm, unless thou art raw.

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

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.

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!

Every absurdity has a champion to defend it.

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.

Conscience is a coward, and those faults it has not strength enough to prevent it seldom has justice enough to accuse.

You can preach a better sermon with your life than with your lips.

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.

Could a man live by it, it were not unpleasant employment to be a poet.

The jests of the rich are ever successful.

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

Law grinds the poor, and rich men rule the law.

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.

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