Top 300 Oliver Goldsmith Quotes (2026 Update)
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151. “The premises being thus settled, I proceed to observe that the concatenation of self-existence, proceeding in a reciprocal duplicate ratio, naturally produces a problematical dialogism, which in some measure proves that the essence of spirituality may be referred to the second predicable.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

157. “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

158. “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

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

160. “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

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

162. “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

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

164. “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

165. “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

166. “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

Featured in: Romance Quotes

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

168. “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

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

171. “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

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

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

175. “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

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

177. “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

178. “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

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

180. “In two opposite opinions, if one be perfectly reasonable, the other can’t be perfectly right.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

185. “A boy will learn more true wisdom in a public school in a year than by a private education in five. It is not from masters, but from their equals, that youth learn a knowledge of the world.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

190. “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

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

194. “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

195. “The youth who follows his appetites too soon seizes the cup, before it has received its best ingredients, and by anticipating his pleasures, robs the remaining parts of life of their share, so that his eagerness only produces manhood of imbecility and an age of pain.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

199. “Novels teach the youthful mind to sigh after happiness that never existed.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

200. “With disadvantages enough to bring him to humility, a Scotsman is one of the proudest things alive.”

— Oliver Goldsmith