Top 300 Oliver Goldsmith Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 5 of 7

201. “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

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

204. “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

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

207. “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

208. “What is genius or courage without a heart?”

— Oliver Goldsmith

209. “We are not to judge of the feelings of others by what we might feel if in their place. However dark the habitation of the mole to our eyes, yet the animal itself finds the apartment sufficiently lightsome.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

210. “Every want that stimulates the breast becomes a source of pleasure when redressed.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

211. “It has been well observed that few are better qualified to give others advice than those who have taken the least of it themselves.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

212. “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

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

214. “We sometimes had those little rubs which Providence sends to enhance the value of its favors.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

215. “What if in Scotland’s wilds we viel’d our head, Where tempests whistle round the sordid bed; Where the rug’s two-fold use we might display, By night a blanket, and a plaid by day.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

216. “Embosom’d in the deep where Holland lies. Methinks her patient sons before me stand, Where the broad ocean leans against the land.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

217. “Blest be those feasts, with simple plenty crowned, Where all the ruddy family around Laugh at the jests or pranks that never fail Or sigh with pity at some mournful tale.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

218. “Friendship is made up of esteem and pleasure; pity is composed of sorrow and contempt: the mind may for some time fluctuate between them, but it can never entertain both at once.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

219. “Persecution is a tribute the great must always pay for preeminence.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

220. “It has been remarked that almost every character which has excited either attention or pity has owed part of its success to merit, and part to a happy concurrence of circumstances in its favor. Had Caesar or Cromwell exchanged countries, the one might have been a sergeant and the other an exciseman.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

221. “And as a bird each fond endearment tries To tempt its new-fledg’d offspring to the skies, He tried each art, reprov’d each dull delay, Allur’d to brighter worlds, and led the way.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

222. “Both wit and understanding are trifles without integrity. The ignorant peasant without fault is greater than the philosopher with many. What is genius or courage without a heart?”

— Oliver Goldsmith

223. “Even children follow’d with endearing wile, And pluck’d his gown, to share the good man’s smile.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

224. “I have found by experience that they who have spent all their lives in cities contract not only an effeminacy of habit, but of thinking.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

225. “While selfishness joins hands with no one of the virtues, benevolence is allied to them all.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

226. “The fortunate circumstances of our lives are generally found, at last, to be of our own producing.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

227. “The polite of every country seem to have but one character. A gentleman of Sweden differs but little, except in trifles, from one of any other country. It is among the vulgar we are to find those distinctions which characterize a people.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

228. “Our Garrick ’s a salad; for in him we see Oil, vinegar, sugar, and saltness agree!”

— Oliver Goldsmith

229. “In a polite age almost every person becomes a reader, and receives more instruction from the Press than the Pulpit.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

230. “Surely the best way to meet the enemy is head on in the field and not wait till they plunder our very homes.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

231. “Though very poor, may still be very blest.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

232. “As boys should be educated with temperance, so the first greatest lesson that should be taught them is to admire frugality. It is by the exercise of this virtue alone they can ever expect to be useful members of society.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

233. “The malicious sneer is improperly called laughter.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

234. “Taste is the power of relishing or rejecting whatever is offered for the entertainment of the imagination.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

235. “The person whose clothes are extremely fine I am too apt to consider as not being possessed of any superiority of fortune, but resembling those Indians who are found to wear all the gold they have in the world in a bob at the nose.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

236. “True generosity is a duty as indispensably necessary as those imposed upon us by the law. It is a rule imposed upon us by reason, which should be the sovereign law of a rational being.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

237. “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

238. “There is probably no country so barbarous that would not disclose all it knew, if it received equivalent information; and I am apt to think that a person who was ready to give more knowledge than he received would be welcome wherever he came.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

239. “People seek within a short span of life to satisfy a thousand desires, each of which is insatiable.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

240. “What we place most hopes upon, generally proves most fatal.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

241. “Write how you want, the critic shall show the world you could have written better.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

242. “So the loud torrent, and the whirlwind’s roar, But bind him to his native mountains more.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

243. “Politics resemble religion; attempting to divest either of ceremony is the most certain mode of bringing either into contempt.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

244. “An emperor in his nightcap will not meet with half the respect of an emperor with a crown.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

245. “The way to acquire lasting esteem is not by the fewness of a writer’s faults, but the greatness of his beauties, and our noblest works are generally most replete with both.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

246. “This is that eloquence the ancients represented as lightning, bearing down every opposer; this the power which has turned whole assemblies into astonishment, admiration and awe- – that is described by the torrent, the flame, and every other instance of irresistible impetuosity.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

247. “All that philosophy can teach is to be stubborn or sullen under misfortunes.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

248. “Life at the greatest and best is but a froward child, that must be humored and coaxed a little till it falls asleep, and then all the care is over.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

249. “I can’t say whether we had more wit among us now than usual, but I am certain we had more laughing, which answered the end as well.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

250. “The wisdom of the ignorant somewhat resembles the instinct of animals; it is diffused in but a very narrow sphere, but within the circle it acts with vigor, uniformity, and success.”

— Oliver Goldsmith