Top 300 Oliver Goldsmith Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “In the end we only regret the chances we didn’t take.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

5. “And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew, that one small head could carry all he knew.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

6. “I love everything that is old; old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wines.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

7. “Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

8. “The first blow is half the battle.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

9. “The loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

11. “Silence gives consent.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

12. “Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates, and men decay. Princes and lords may flourish or may fade,- A breath can make them, as a breath has made; But a bold peasantry, their country’s pride, When once destroy’d, can never be supplied.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

13. “Logicians have but ill defined As rational the human mind; Reason, they say, belongs to man, But let them prove it if they can.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

14. “The true use of speech is not so much to express our wants as to conceal them.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

15. “A man he was to all the country dear, And passing rich with forty pounds a year.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

16. “The first time I read an excellent book, it is to me just as if I had gained a new friend. When I read a book over I have perused before, it resembles the meeting with an old one.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

18. “One man is born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and the other with a wooden ladle.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

19. “Wealth accumulates, and men decay.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

20. “As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form, Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm,- Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread, Eternal sunshine settles on its head.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

21. “The hawthorn bush, with seats beneath the shade, For talking age and whispering lovers made.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

22. “The more various our artificial necessities, the wider is our circle of pleasure; for all pleasure consists in obviating necessities as they rise; luxury, therefore, as it increases our wants, increases our capacity for happiness.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

23. “If we do not find happiness in the present moment, in what shall we find it?”

— Oliver Goldsmith

24. “The ambitious are forever followed by adulation for they receive the most pleasure from flattery.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

25. “If you don’t ask me questions, I can’t give you an untrue answer.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

27. “And what is friendship but a name, A charm that lulls to sleep, A shade that follows wealth or fame, And leaves the wretch to weep?”

— Oliver Goldsmith

28. “To husband out life’s taper at the close, And keep the flames from wasting by repose.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

29. “To make a fine gentleman, several trades are required, but chiefly a barber.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

30. “And fools who came to scoff remain’d to pray.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

31. “Hope is such a bait, it covers any hook.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

32. “Aspiring beggary is wretchedness itself.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

33. “Age, that lessens the enjoyment of life, increases our desire of living.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

34. “Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates, and men decay.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

35. “He cast off his friends as a huntsman his pack, For he knew when he pleas’d he could whistle them back.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

36. “The greatest object in the universe, says a certain philosopher, is a good man struggling with adversity; yet there is still a greater, which is the good man who comes to relieve it.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

37. “Silence is become his mother tongue.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

38. “Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

39. “Good people all, with one accord, Lament for Madam Blaize, Who never wanted a good word From those who spoke her praise.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

40. “The man recovered of the bite, The dog it was that died.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

41. “The mind is ever ingenious in making its own distress.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

42. “Prudery is ignorance.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

43. “Whatever mitigates the woes, or increases the happiness of others, is a just criterion of goodness; and whatever injures society at large, or any individual in it, is a criterion of iniquity.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

44. “Little things are great to little men.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

45. “Creation’s heir, the world, the world is mine!”

— Oliver Goldsmith

46. “Pity and friendship are two passions incompatible with each other.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

47. “Every absurdity has a champion to defend it.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

48. “Death when unmasked shows us a friendly face and is a terror only at a distance.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

49. “In my time, the follies of the town crept slowly among us, but now they travel faster than a stagecoach.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

50. “There is unspeakable pleasure attending the life of a voluntary student.”

— Oliver Goldsmith