Top 300 Oliver Goldsmith Quotes (2025 Update)
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251. “Vain, very vain is my search to find; that happiness which only centers in the mind.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

252. “I could not but smile to hear her talking in this lofty strain, but I was never much displeased with those harmless delusions that tend to make us more happy.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

253. “Girls like to be played with and rumpled a little too sometimes.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

254. “Now, Sir, for my own part, as I naturally hate the face of a tyrant, the farther off he is removed from me, the better pleased am I. The generality of mankind also are of my way of thinking, and have unanimously created one king, whose election at once diminishes the number of tyrants, and puts tyranny at the greatest distance from the greatest number of people.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

255. “To be poor, and to seem poor, is a certain method never to rise.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

256. “It has been a thousand times observed, and I must observe it once more, that the hours we pass with happy prospects in view are more pleasing than those crowned with fruition.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

257. “Fancy restrained may be compared to a fountain, which plays highest by diminishing the aperture.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

258. “Like the tiger, that seldom desists from pursuing man after having once preyed upon human flesh, the reader who has once gratified his appetite with calumny makes ever after the most agreeable feast upon murdered reputations!”

— Oliver Goldsmith

259. “We are not to judge the feelings of others by what we might feel in their place.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

260. “In all the silent manliness of grief.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

261. “The pain which conscience gives the man who has already done wrong is soon got over. Conscience is a coward; and those faults it has not strength enough to prevent, it seldom has justice enough to accuse.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

262. “What real good does an addition to a fortune already sufficient procure? Not any. Could the great man, by having his fortune increased, increase also his appetites, then precedence might be attended with real amusement.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

263. “Now, therefore, I began to associate with none but disappointed authors like myself, who praised, deplored, and despised each other. The satisfaction we found in every celebrated writer’s attempts was inversely as their merits. My unfortunate paradoxes had entirely dried up that source of comfort. I could neither read nor write with satisfaction; for excellence in another was my aversion, and writing was my trade.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

264. “Titles and mottoes to books are like escutcheons and dignities in the hands of a king. The wise sometimes condescend to accept of them; but none but a fool would imagine them of any real importance. We ought to depend upon intrinsic merit, and not the slender helps of the title.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

265. “Want of prudence is too frequently the want of virtue.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

266. “We seldom speak of the virtue which we have, but much oftener of that which we lack.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

267. “Of all kinds of ambition, that which pursues poetical fame is the wildest.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

268. “Them that asks no questions isn’t told a lie.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

269. “Both wit and understanding are trifles without integrity.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

270. “As writers become more numerous, it is natural for readers to become more indolent; whence must necessarily arise a desire of attaining knowledge with the greatest possible ease.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

271. “Man seems the only growth that dwindles here.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

272. “If frugality were established in the state, and if our expenses were laid out to meet needs rather than superfluities of life, there might be fewer wants, and even fewer pleasures, but infinitely more happiness.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

273. “The work of eradicating crimes is not by making punishment familiar, but formidable.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

274. “For the first time, the best may err, art may persuade, and novelty spread out its charms. The first fault is the child of simplicity; but every other the offspring of guilt.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

275. “True genius walks along a line, and, perhaps, our greatest pleasure is in seeing it so often near falling, without being ever actually down.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

276. “Whenever you see a gaming table be sure to know fortune is not there. Rather she is always in the company of industry.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

277. “Is it that Nature, attentive to the preservation of mankind, increases our wishes to live, while she lessens our enjoyments, and as she robs the senses of every pleasure, equips imag-ination in the spoil?”

— Oliver Goldsmith

278. “We are all sure of two things, at least; we shall suffer and we shall all die.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

279. “Fortune is ever seen accompanying industry.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

280. “Wit generally succeeds more from being happily addressed than from its native poignancy. A jest, calculated to spread at a gaming-table, may be received with, perfect indifference should it happen to drop in a mackerel-boat.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

281. “Fear guides more to their duty than gratitude; for one man who is virtuous from the love of virtue, from the obligation he thinks he lies under to the Giver of all, there are ten thousand who are good only from their apprehension of punishment.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

282. “Nobody with me at sea but myself.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

283. “The bounds of a man’s knowledge are easily concealed, if he has but prudence.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

284. “At this he laughed, and so did we: the jests of the rich are ever successful.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

285. “A man’s own heart must ever be given to gain that of another.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

286. “I learn several great truths; as that it is impossible to see into the ways of futurity, that punishment always attends the villain, that love is the fond soother of the human breast.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

287. “The pregnant quarry teem’d with human form.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

288. “Whatever the skill of any country may be in the sciences, it is from its excellence in polite learning alone that it must expect a character from posterity.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

289. “It seemed to me pretty plain, that they had more of love than matrimony in them.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

290. “Fear guides more than gratitude.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

291. “In proportion as society refines, new books must ever become more necessary.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

292. “Take a dollar from a thousand and it will be a thousand no more.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

293. “Paltry affectation, strained allusions, and disgusting finery are easily attained by those who choose to wear them; they are but too frequently the badges of ignorance or of stupidity, whenever it would endeavor to please.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

294. “Some fleeting good, that mocks me with the view.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

295. “The life of a scholar seldom abounds with adventure.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

296. “There are but few talents requisite to become a popular preacher; for the people are easily pleased if they perceive any endeavors in the orator to please them. The meanest qualifications will work this effect if the preacher sincerely sets about it.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

297. “To a philosopher no circumstance, however trifling, is too minute.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

298. “One should not quarrel with a dog without a reason sufficient to vindicate one through all the courts of morality.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

299. “Our pleasures are short, and can only charm at intervals; love is a method of protraction our greatest pleasure.”

— Oliver Goldsmith

300. “Thus ’tis with all; their chief and constant care Is to seem everything but what they are.”

— Oliver Goldsmith