Top 300 Oliver Goldsmith Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “Every acknowledgment of gratitude is a circumstance of humiliation; and some are found to submit to frequent mortifications of this kind, proclaiming what obligations they owe, merely because they think it in some measure cancels the debt.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

152. “Our chief comforts often produce our greatest anxieties, and the increase in our possessions is but an inlet to new disquietudes.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

153. “The English laws punish vice; the Chinese laws do more, they reward virtue.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

154. “The whitewash’d wall, the nicely sanded floor, The varnish’d clock that click’d behind the door; The chest, contriv’d a double debt to pay,- A bed by night, a chest of drawers by day.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

155. “Like the bee, we should make our industry our amusement.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

156. “Measures, not men, have always been my mark.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

157. “Life has been compared to a race, but the allusion improves by observing, that the most swift are usually the least manageable and the most likely to stray from the course. Great abilities have always been less serviceable to the possessors than moderate ones.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

158. “To me more dear, congenial to my heart, One native charm, than all the gloss of art.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

159. “Wept o’er his wounds, or tales of sorrow done, Shoulder’d his crutch, and shew’d how fields were won.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

160. “A French woman is a perfect architect in dress: she never, with Gothic ignorance, mixes the orders; she never tricks out a snobby Doric shape with Corinthian finery; or, to speak without metaphor, she conforms to general fashion only when it happens not to be repugnant to private beauty.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

161. “To what fortuitous occurrence do we not owe every pleasure and convenience of our lives.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

162. “A flattering painter, who made it his care To draw men as they ought to be, not as they are.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

163. “I fancy the character of a poet is in every country the same, – fond of enjoying the present, careless of the future; his conversation that of a man of sense, his actions those of a fool.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

164. “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

165. “Religion does what philosophy could never do; it shows the equal dealings of Heaven to the happy and the unhappy, and levels all human enjoyments to nearly the same standard. It gives to both rich and poor the same happiness hereafter, and equal hopes to aspire after it.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

167. “Elegy of the Death of a Mad Dog The dog, to gain some praivate ends, Went mad and bit the man.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

168. “Villainy, when detected, never gives up, but boldly adds impudence to imposture.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

169. “When we take a slight survey of the surface of our globe a thousand objects offer themselves which, though long known, yet still demand our curiosity.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

170. “By every remove I only drag a greater length of chain.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

171. “And e’en while fashion’s brightest arts decoy, The heart distrusting asks if this be joy.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

172. “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

173. “To aim at excellence, our reputation, and friends, and all must be ventured; to aim at the average we run no risk and provide little service.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

174. “Absence, like death, sets a seal on the image of those we love: we cannot realize the intervening changes which time may have effected.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

175. “Whatever be the motives which induce men to write, – whether avarice or fame, – the country becomes more wise and happy in which they most serve for instructors.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

176. “You, that are going to be married, think things can never be done too fast: but we that are old, and know what we are about, must elope methodically, madam.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

177. “While Resignation gently slopes away, And all his prospects brightening to the last, His heaven commences ere the world be past.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

179. “An Englishman fears contempt more than death.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

180. “The jests of the rich are ever successful.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

181. “She who makes her husband and her children happy, who reclaims the one from vice, and trains up the other to virtue, is a much greater character than the ladies described in romance, whose whole occupation is to murder mankind with shafts from their quiver or their eyes.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

182. “They please, are pleas’d, they give to get esteem Till, seeming blest, they grow to what they seem.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

183. “The folly of others is ever most ridiculous to those who are themselves most foolish.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

184. “Premature consolation is but the remembrancer of sorrow.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

185. “If the soul be happily disposed, every thing becomes capable of affording entertainment, and distress will almost want a name.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

186. “Mortifications are often more painful than real calamities.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

187. “A mind too vigorous and active, serves only to consume the body to which it is joined.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

188. “Such dainties to them, their health it might hurt; It ’s like sending them ruffles when wanting a shirt.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

189. “When a person has no need to borrow they find multitudes willing to lend.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

190. “I always get the better when I argue alone.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

191. “There is a greatness in being generous, and there is only simple justice in satisfying creditors. Generosity is the part of the soul raised above the vulgar.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

192. “In arguing one should meet serious pleading with humor, and humor with serious pleading.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

193. “Good counsel rejected returns to enrich the givers bosom.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

194. “Wisdom makes a slow defense against trouble, though a sure one in the end.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

195. “They liked the book better the more it made them cry.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

196. “Whichever way we look the prospect is disagreeable. Behind, we have left pleasures we shall never enjoy, and therefore regret; and before, we see pleasures which we languish to possess, and are consequently uneasy till we possess them.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

197. “As for murmurs, mother, we grumble a little now and then, to be sure; but there’s no love lost between us.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

198. “As few subjects are more interesting to society, so few have been more frequently written upon than the education of youth.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

199. “A night-cap deck’d his brows instead of bay,- A cap by night, a stocking all the day.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

200. “There are a hundred faults in this Thing and a hundred things might be said to prove them beauties.”

— Oliver Goldsmith