Oliver Goldsmith
Law grinds the poor, and rich men rule the law.Collection: Men
Hope is such a bait, it covers any hook.Collection: Hope
Friendship is a disinterested commerce between equals; love, an abject intercourse between tyrants and slaves.Collection: Friendship
I chose my wife, as she did her wedding gown, for qualities that would wear well.Collection: Wedding
Success consists of getting up just one more time than you fall.Collection: Success
Let schoolmasters puzzle their brain, With grammar, and nonsense, and learning, Good liquor, I stoutly maintain, Gives genius a better discerning.Collection: Learning
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.Collection: Future
I love everything that's old, - old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine.Collection: Saint
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!Collection: Happiness
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.Collection: Travel
The best way to make your audience laugh is to start laughing yourself.Collection: Humor
Where wealth accumulates, men decay.Collection: Men
They say women and music should never be dated.Collection: Women
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?Collection: Art
Life is a journey that must be traveled no matter how bad the roads and accommodations.Collection: Life
All that a husband or wife really wants is to be pitied a little, praised a little, and appreciated a little.Collection: Marriage
You can preach a better sermon with your life than with your lips.Collection: Life
The company of fools may first make us smile, but in the end we always feel melancholy.Collection: Smile
Pity and friendship are two passions incompatible with each other.Collection: Friendship
Every absurdity has a champion to defend it.
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.
Man wants but little here below, nor wants that little long.
The jests of the rich are ever successful.
Honour sinks where commerce long prevails.
People seldom improve when they have no other model but themselves to copy.
On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting, 'Twas only when he was off, he was acting.
Tenderness is a virtue.
Girls like to be played with, and rumpled a little too, sometimes.
If you were to make little fishes talk, they would talk like whales.
The hours we pass with happy prospects in view are more pleasing than those crowded with fruition.
With disadvantages enough to bring him to humility, a Scotsman is one of the proudest things alive.
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.
Be not affronted at a joke. If one throw salt at thee, thou wilt receive no harm, unless thou art raw.
There are some faults so nearly allied to excellence that we can scarce weed out the vice without eradicating the virtue.
Conscience is a coward, and those faults it has not strength enough to prevent it seldom has justice enough to accuse.
Surely the best way to meet the enemy is head on in the field and not wait till they plunder our very homes.
Could a man live by it, it were not unpleasant employment to be a poet.
Ceremonies are different in every country, but true politeness is everywhere the same.
Write how you want, the critic shall show the world you could have written better.
Modesty seldom resides in a breast that is not enriched with nobler virtues.
Absence, like death, sets a seal on the image of those we love: we cannot realize the intervening changes which time may have effected.Collection: Love
Don't let us make imaginary evils, when you know we have so many real ones to encounter.Collection: Real
True wisdom consists of tracing effects to their causes.Collection: Wisdom
Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.Collection: Men
As ten millions of circles can never make a square, so the united voice of myriads cannot lend the smallest foundation to falsehood.Collection: Squares
Error is always talkative.Collection: Errors
Wealth accumulates, and men decay.Collection: Men
If we do not find happiness in the present moment, in what shall we find it?Collection: Happiness