Top 300 Oliver Goldsmith Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “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

152. “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

153. “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

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

155. “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

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

159. “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

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

162. “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

163. “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

164. “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

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

167. “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

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

169. “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

170. “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

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

177. “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

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

183. “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

184. “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

185. “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

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

189. “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

190. “Our bounty, like a drop of water, disappears, when diffus’d too widely.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

192. “Books are necessary to correct the vices of the polite; but those vices are ever changing, and the antidote should be changed accordingly should still be new.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

195. “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

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

199. “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

200. “I have known a German Prince with more titles than subjects, and a Spanish nobleman with more names than shirts.”

— Oliver Goldsmith