Top 300 Oliver Goldsmith Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “Elegy of the Death of a Mad Dog The dog, to gain some praivate ends, Went mad and bit the man.”

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

159. “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

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

162. “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

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

— 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. “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

167. “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

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

169. “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

170. “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

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

172. “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

173. “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

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

178. “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

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

185. “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

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

188. “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

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

193. “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

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

197. “There is nothing so absurd or ridiculous that has not at some time been said by some philosopher. Fontenelle says he would undertake to persuade the whole public of readers to believe that the sun was neither the cause of light or heat, if he could only get six philosophers on his side.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

200. “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