Oliver Goldsmith
Ask me no questions, and I'll tell you no lies.Collection: Funny
The loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind.Collection: Laughter
A traveler of taste will notice that the wise are polite all over the world, but the fool only at home.Collection: Wise
If one wishes to become rich they must appear rich.Collection: Wish
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.Collection: Struggle
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.Collection: Life
Careless their merits or their faults to scan, His pity gave ere charity began. Thus to relieve the wretched was his pride, And even his failings lean'd to Virtue's side.Collection: Pride
Unequal combinations are always disadvantageous to the weaker side.Collection: Business
Turn, gentle Hermit of the Dale, And guide my lonely way To where yon taper cheers the vale With hospitable ray.Collection: Lonely
Whatever be the motives which induce men to write,--whether avarice or fame,--the country becomes more wise and happy in which they most serve for instructors.Collection: Wise
The person whose clothes are extremely fine I am too apt to consider as not being possessed of any superiority of fortune, but resembling those Indians who are found to wear all the gold they have in the world in a bob at the nose.Collection: Clothes
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.Collection: Country
Popular glory is a perfect coquette; her lovers must toil, feel every inquietude, indulge every caprice, and perhaps at last be jilted into the bargain. True glory, on the other hand, resembles a woman of sense; her admirers must play no tricks. They feel no great anxiety, for they are sure in the end of being rewarded in proportion to their merit.Collection: Hands
There is nothing so absurd or ridiculous that has not at some time been said by some philosopher.Collection: Cynical
The heart of every man lies open to the shafts of correction if the archer can take proper aim.Collection: Lying
The nakedness of the indigent world may be clothed from the trimmings of the vain.Collection: World
Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates, and men decay. Princes and lords may flourish or may fade,- A breath can make them, as a breath has made; But a bold peasantry, their country's pride, When once destroy'd, can never be supplied.Collection: Country
Of praise a mere glutton, he swallow'd what came, And the puff a dunce, he mistook it for fame; Till his relish grown callous, almost to displease, Who pepper'd the highest was surest to please.Collection: Puff
The life of a scholar seldom abounds with adventure.Collection: Adventure
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?Collection: Wish
The volumes of antiquity, like medals, may very well serve to amuse the curious, but the works of the moderns, like the current coin of a kingdom, are much better for immediate use.Collection: May
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.Collection: Love Is
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.Collection: Art
And fools who came to scoff remain'd to pray.Collection: Fool
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!Collection: Men
How blest is he who crowns in shades like these A youth of labour with an age of ease!Collection: Retirement
Error is ever talkative.Collection: Errors
Who pepper'd the highest was surest to please.Collection: Peppers
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.Collection: Ignorance
And what is friendship but a name, A charm that lulls to sleep, A shade that follows wealth or fame, And leaves the wretch to weep?Collection: Sleep
Measures, not men, have always been my mark.Collection: Men
A kind and gentle heart he had, To comfort friends and foes; The naked every day he clad When he put on his clothes.Collection: Kindness
I find you want me to furnish you with argument and intellects too. No, sir, these, I protest you, are too hard for me.Collection: Want
They please, are pleas'd, they give to get esteem Till, seeming blest, they grow to what they seem.Collection: Ambition
In arguing one should meet serious pleading with humor, and humor with serious pleading.Collection: Serious
Trade's proud empire hastes to swift decay.Collection: Business
Taste is the power of relishing or rejecting whatever is offered for the entertainment of the imagination.Collection: Imagination
While selfishness joins hands with no one of the virtues, benevolence is allied to them all.Collection: Hands
Nobody with me at sea but myself.Collection: Sea
Philosophy ... should not pretend to increase our present stock, but make us economists of what we are possessed of.Collection: Philosophy
And the weak soul, within itself unbless'd, Leans for all pleasure on another's breast.Collection: Soul
Mortifications are often more painful than real calamities.Collection: Real
The genteel thing is the genteel thing any time, if as be that a gentleman bees in a concatenation accordingly.Collection: Time
Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow, Or by the lazy Scheld or wandering Po.Collection: Lazy
The bounds of a man's knowledge are easily concealed, if he has but prudence.Collection: Men
I have found by experience that they who have spent all their lives in cities contract not only an effeminacy of habit, but of thinking.Collection: Thinking
How wide the limits stand Between a splendid and a happy land.Collection: Land