Oliver Goldsmith Quotes

I love everything that's old, - old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine.

- Oliver Goldsmith

The best way to make your audience laugh is to start laughing yourself.

- Oliver Goldsmith

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

Hope is such a bait, it covers any hook.

- Oliver Goldsmith

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

- Oliver Goldsmith

Could a man live by it, it were not unpleasant employment to be a poet.

- Oliver Goldsmith

When lovely woman stoops to folly, and finds too late that men betray, what charm can soothe her melancholy, what art can wash her guilt away?

- Oliver Goldsmith

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

- Oliver Goldsmith

Let schoolmasters puzzle their brain, With grammar, and nonsense, and learning, Good liquor, I stoutly maintain, Gives genius a better discerning.

- Oliver Goldsmith

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

- Oliver Goldsmith

Life is a journey that must be traveled no matter how bad the roads and accommodations.

- Oliver Goldsmith

A man who leaves home to mend himself and others is a philosopher; but he who goes from country to country, guided by the blind impulse of curiosity, is a vagabond.

- Oliver Goldsmith

If you were to make little fishes talk, they would talk like whales.

- Oliver Goldsmith

The company of fools may first make us smile, but in the end we always feel melancholy.

- Oliver Goldsmith

I chose my wife, as she did her wedding gown, for qualities that would wear well.

- Oliver Goldsmith

Friendship is a disinterested commerce between equals; love, an abject intercourse between tyrants and slaves.

- Oliver Goldsmith

Pity and friendship are two passions incompatible with each other.

- Oliver Goldsmith

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

- Oliver Goldsmith

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

Every absurdity has a champion to defend it.

- Oliver Goldsmith

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

They say women and music should never be dated.

- Oliver Goldsmith

On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting, 'Twas only when he was off, he was acting.

- Oliver Goldsmith

Modesty seldom resides in a breast that is not enriched with nobler virtues.

- Oliver Goldsmith

The hours we pass with happy prospects in view are more pleasing than those crowded with fruition.

- Oliver Goldsmith

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

- Oliver Goldsmith

I was ever of the opinion, that the honest man who married and brought up a large family, did more service than he who continued single, and only talked of population.

- Oliver Goldsmith

Where wealth accumulates, men decay.

- Oliver Goldsmith

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

You can preach a better sermon with your life than with your lips.

- Oliver Goldsmith

People seldom improve when they have no other model but themselves to copy.

- Oliver Goldsmith

Girls like to be played with, and rumpled a little too, sometimes.

- Oliver Goldsmith

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

- Oliver Goldsmith

Conscience is a coward, and those faults it has not strength enough to prevent it seldom has justice enough to accuse.

- Oliver Goldsmith

Honour sinks where commerce long prevails.

- Oliver Goldsmith

Tenderness is a virtue.

- Oliver Goldsmith

Man wants but little here below, nor wants that little long.

- Oliver Goldsmith

Success consists of getting up just one more time than you fall.

- Oliver Goldsmith

The jests of the rich are ever successful.

- Oliver Goldsmith

Law grinds the poor, and rich men rule the law.

- Oliver Goldsmith