Top 300 Oliver Goldsmith Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “Aromatic plants bestow no spicy fragrance while they grow; but crush’d or trodden to the ground, diffuse their balmy sweets around.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

102. “I hate the French because they are all slaves and wear wooden shoes.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

103. “A traveler of taste will notice that the wise are polite all over the world, but the fool only at home.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

104. “The genteel thing is the genteel thing any time, if as be that a gentleman bees in a concatenation accordingly.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

105. “Politeness is the result of good sense and good nature.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

106. “Honour sinks where commerce long prevails.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

108. “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

109. “Ridicule has always been the enemy of enthusiasm, and the only worthy opponent to ridicule is success.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

110. “To the last moment of his breath, On hope the wretch relies; And even the pang preceding death Bids expectation rise.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

111. “As for disappointing them I should not so much mind; but I can’t abide to disappoint myself.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

112. “Why was this heart of mine formed with so much sensibility! Or why not my fortune adapted to its impulses! Tenderness without a capacity of relieving only makes the man who feels it more wretched than the object which sues for assistance.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

113. “The sports of children satisfy the child.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

114. “Trade’s proud empire hastes to swift decay.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

115. “The country blooms – a garden, and a grave.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

116. “The ingratitude of the world can never deprive us of the conscious happiness of having acted with humanity ourselves.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

117. “The heart of every man lies open to the shafts of correction if the archer can take proper aim.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

118. “How blest is he who crowns in shades like these A youth of labour with an age of ease!”

— Oliver Goldsmith

119. “This same philosophy is a good horse in the stable, but an arrant jade on a journey.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

120. “That virtue which requires to be ever guarded is scarce worth the sentinel.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

121. “But winter lingering chills the lap of May.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

123. “And learn the luxury of doing good.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

124. “The pictures placed for ornament and use, The twelve good rules, the royal game of goose.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

125. “The watch-dog’s voice that bay’d the whispering wind, And the loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

126. “Here lies David Garrick, describe me who can, An abridgment of all that was pleasant in man.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

127. “Pity, though it may often relieve, is but, at best, a short-lived passion, and seldom affords distress more than transitory assistance; with some it scarce lasts from the first impulse till the hand can be put into the pocket.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

128. “Alike all ages. Dames of ancient days Have led their children through the mirthful maze, And the gay grandsire, skill’d in gestic lore, Has frisk’d beneath the burden of threescore.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

129. “Thou source of all my bliss and all my woe, That found’st me poor at first, and keep’st me so.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

130. “Nothing is so contemptible as that affectation of wisdom, which some display, by universal incredulity.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

131. “He watched and wept and prayed and felt for all.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

132. “Here let me sit in sorrow for mankind.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

133. “How wide the limits stand Between a splendid and a happy land.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

134. “All his faults are such that one loves him still the better for them.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

135. “Who mix’d reason with pleasure, and wisdom with mirth: If he had any faults, he has left us in doubt.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

136. “Of praise a mere glutton, he swallow’d what came, And the puff a dunce, he mistook it for fame; Till his relish grown callous, almost to displease, Who pepper’d the highest was surest to please.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

137. “I fretted myself about the mistakes of government, like other people; but finding myself every day grow more angry, and the government growing no better, I left it to mend itself.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

138. “And the weak soul, within itself unbless’d, Leans for all pleasure on another’s breast.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

139. “Unequal combinations are always disadvantageous to the weaker side.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

140. “No one but a fool would measure their satisfaction by what the world thinks of it.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

141. “The little mind who loves itself, will wr’te and think with the vulgar; but the great mind will be bravely eccentric, and scorn the beaten road, from universal benevolence.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

142. “I have visited many countries, and have been in cities without number, yet never did I enter a town which could not produce ten or twelve little great men; all fancying themselves known to the rest of the world, and complimenting each other upon their extensive reputation.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

143. “He makes a very handsome corpse and becomes his coffin prodigiously.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

144. “A book may be very amusing with numerous errors, or it may be very dull without a single absurdity.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

145. “Were I to be angry at men being fools, I could here find ample room for declamation; but, alas! I have been a fool myself; and why should I be angry with them for being something so natural to every child of humanity?”

— Oliver Goldsmith

146. “It is not easy to recover an art when once lost.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

147. “One writer, for instance, excels at a plan or a title page, another works away at the body of the book, and a third is a dab at an index.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

149. “I do not love a man who is zealous for nothing.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith