21 Quotes By Oliver Goldsmith


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.
Oliver Goldsmith on alone

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!
Oliver Goldsmith on beauty

Pity and friendship are two passions incompatible with each other.
Oliver Goldsmith on friendship

Friendship is a disinterested commerce between equals love, an abject intercourse between tyrants and slaves.
Oliver Goldsmith on friendship

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.
Oliver Goldsmith on future

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.
Oliver Goldsmith on great

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!
Oliver Goldsmith on happiness

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.
Oliver Goldsmith on home

Hope is such a bait, it covers any hook.
Oliver Goldsmith on hope

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.
Oliver Goldsmith on knowledge

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

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

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!
Oliver Goldsmith on nature

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

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

Success consists of getting up just one more time than you fall.
Oliver Goldsmith on success

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

Aromatic plants bestow no spicy fragrance while they grow; but crush'd or trodden to the ground, diffuse their balmy sweets around.
Oliver Goldsmith on adversity

How blest is he who crowns, in shades like these, A youth of labor with an age of ease.
Oliver Goldsmith on age

Hope, like the gleaming taper's light, adorns and cheers our way; and still, as darker grows the night, emits a brighter ray.
Oliver Goldsmith on hope