Quotes from Oliver Goldsmith

The jests of the rich are ever successful.

The greatest object in the universe, says a certain philosopher, is a good man struggling with adversity; yet there is still a greater, which is the good man who comes to relieve it.

The dog, to gain some private ends, Went mad, and bit the man.

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

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

Logicians have but ill defined As rational the human mind; Reason, they say, belongs to man, But let them prove it if they can.

Measures, not men, have always been my mark.

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.

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

Here lies David Garrick, describe me who can, An abridgment of all that was pleasant in man.

Teach erring man to spurn the rage of gain.

A man's own heart must ever be given to gain that of another.

What we say of a thing that has just come in fashion And that which we do with the dead, Is the name of the honestest man in the nation: What more of a man can be said?

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

A man he was to all the country dear, And passing rich with forty pounds a year.

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

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

As for murmurs, mother, we grumble a little now and then, to be sure; but there's no love lost between us.

Silence is become his mother tongue.

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!

This same philosophy is a good horse in the stable, but an arrant jade on a journey.

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

Philosophy is a good horse in the stable but an errant jade on a journey.

In all my wanderings round this world of care, In all my griefs-and God has given my share- I still had hopes my latest hours to crown, Amidst these humble bowers to lay me down.