Oliver Goldsmith

The malicious sneer is improperly called laughter.
Oliver Goldsmith

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

I have known a German Prince with more titles than subjects, and a Spanish nobleman with more names than shirts.
Oliver Goldsmith

If one wishes to become rich they must appear rich.
Oliver Goldsmith

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

The life of man is a journey; a journey that must be traveled, however bad the roads or the accommodation.
Oliver Goldsmith

We had no revolutions to fear, nor fatigues to undergo; all our adventures were by the fireside, and all our migrations from the blue bed to the brown.
Oliver Goldsmith

Aromatic plants bestow no spicy fragrance while they grow; but crush'd or trodden to the ground, diffuse their balmy sweets around.
Oliver Goldsmith

The ambitious are forever followed by adulation for they receive the most pleasure from flattery.
Oliver Goldsmith

There is no arguing with him, for if his pistol misses fire, he knocks you down with the butt end of it.
Oliver Goldsmith

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

Persecution is a tribute the great must always pay for preeminence.
Oliver Goldsmith

For he that fights and runs away, may live to fight another day, but he, who is in battle slain, can never rise and fight again.
Oliver Goldsmith

The loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind.
Oliver Goldsmith

Ridicule has always been the enemy of enthusiasm, and the only worthy opponent to ridicule is success.
Oliver Goldsmith

A modest woman, dressed out in all her finery, is the most tremendous object of the whole creation.
Oliver Goldsmith

No one but a fool would measure their satisfaction by what the world thinks of it.
Oliver Goldsmith

I love everything that's old: old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wines; and, I believe, Dorothy, you'll own I have been pretty fond of an old wife.
Oliver Goldsmith

The mind is ever ingenious in making its own distress.
Oliver Goldsmith

Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, where wealth accumulates, and men decay.
Oliver Goldsmith

Good counsel rejected returns to enrich the givers bosom.
Oliver Goldsmith

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

The doctor found, when she was dead, her last disorder mortal.
Oliver Goldsmith

When any one of our relations was found to be a person of a very bad character, a troublesome guest, or one we desired to get rid of, upon his leaving my house I ever took care to lend him a riding-coat, or a pair of boots, or sometimes a horse of small value, and I always had the satisfaction of finding he never came back to return them.
Oliver Goldsmith

In all the silent manliness of grief.
Oliver Goldsmith

Our chief comforts often produce our greatest anxieties, and the increase in our possessions is but an inlet to new disquietudes.
Oliver Goldsmith

He cast off his friends as a huntsman his pack, for he knew when he pleased he could whistle them back.
Oliver Goldsmith

The heart of every man lies open to the shafts of correction if the archer can take proper aim.
Oliver Goldsmith

Who can direct when all pretend to know?
Oliver Goldsmith

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

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

When a person has no need to borrow they find multitudes willing to lend.
Oliver Goldsmith

Well had the boding tremblers learned to trace the day's disasters in his morning face.
Oliver Goldsmith

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

Truth from his lips prevailed with double sway, and fools, who came to scoff, remained to pray.
Oliver Goldsmith

Like the bee, we should make our industry our amusement.
Oliver Goldsmith

Wisdom makes a slow defense against trouble, though a sure one in the end.
Oliver Goldsmith

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

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

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

Don't let us make imaginary evils, when you know we have so many real ones to encounter.
Oliver Goldsmith

But in his duty prompt at every call, he watched and wept, he prayed and felt for all.
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

Crime generally punishes itself.
Oliver Goldsmith

Unequal combinations are always disadvantageous to the weaker side.
Oliver Goldsmith

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

Vain, very vain is my search to find; that happiness which only centers in the mind.
Oliver Goldsmith

Thou source of all my bliss and all my woe, that found me poor at first, and keep me so.
Oliver Goldsmith

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