Oliver Goldsmith
This same philosophy is a good horse in the stable, but an arrant jade on a journey.Collection: Horse
A silent address is the genuine eloquence of sincerity.Collection: Addresses
Every want that stimulates the breast becomes a source of pleasure when redressed.Collection: Want
Wit generally succeeds more from being happily addressed than from its native poignancy. A jest, calculated to spread at a gaming-table, may be received with, perfect indifference should it happen to drop in a mackerel-boat.Collection: Perfect
Want of prudence is too frequently the want of virtue.Collection: Want
I have visited many countries, and have been in cities without number, yet never did I enter a town which could not produce ten or twelve little great men; all fancying themselves known to the rest of the world, and complimenting each other upon their extensive reputation.Collection: Country
In my time, the follies of the town crept slowly among us, but now they travel faster than a stagecoach.Collection: Time
Those who place their affections at first on trifles for amusement, will find these trifles become at last their most serious concerns.Collection: Amusement
There is probably no country so barbarous that would not disclose all it knew, if it received equivalent information; and I am apt to think that a person who was ready to give more knowledge than he received would be welcome wherever he came.Collection: Country
Here let me sit in sorrow for mankind.Collection: Sorrow
As for murmurs, mother, we grumble a little now and then, to be sure; but there's no love lost between us.Collection: Life
The bashful virgin's sidelong looks of love.Collection: Love
The pregnant quarry teem'd with human form.Collection: Life
All the bloomy flush of life is fled.Collection: Life
Teach erring man to spurn the rage of gain.Collection: Teaching
Titles and mottoes to books are like escutcheons and dignities in the hands of a king. The wise sometimes condescend to accept of them; but none but a fool would imagine them of any real importance. We ought to depend upon intrinsic merit, and not the slender helps of the title.Collection: Wise
If you don't ask me questions, I can't give you an untrue answer.Collection: Giving
Wisdom makes a slow defense against trouble, though a sure one in the end.Collection: Wisdom
All his faults are such that one loves him still the better for them.Collection: Love
It world be well had we more misers than we have among us.Collection: World
I do not love a man who is zealous for nothing.Collection: Love
The work of eradicating crimes is not by making punishment familiar, but formidable.Collection: Punishment
The folly of others is ever most ridiculous to those who are themselves most foolish.Collection: Ridiculous
Crime generally punishes itself.Collection: Crime
Whenever you see a gaming table be sure to know fortune is not there. Rather she is always in the company of industry.Collection: Gambling
Both wit and understanding are trifles without integrity.Collection: Integrity
All the sciences are, in some measure, linked with each other, and before the one is ended, the other begins.Collection: Science
Religion does what philosophy could never do; it shows the equal dealings of Heaven to the happy and the unhappy, and levels all human enjoyments to nearly the same standard. It gives to both rich and poor the same happiness hereafter, and equal hopes to aspire after it.Collection: Philosophy
Quality and title have such allurements that hundreds are ready to give up all their own importance, to cringe, to flatter, to look little, and to pall every pleasure in constraint, merely to be among the great, though without the least hopes of improving their understanding or sharing their generosity. They might be happier among their equals.Collection: Giving Up
The world is like a vast sea: mankind like a vessel sailing on its tempestuous bosom. ... [T]he sciences serve us for oars.Collection: Science
We may affirm of Mr. Buffon, that which has been said of the chemists of old; though he may have failed in attaining his principal aim, of establishing a theory, yet he has brought together such a multitude of facts relative to the history of the earth, and the nature of its fossil productions, that curiosity finds ample compensation, even while it feels the want of conviction.Collection: Nature
Like the bee, we should make our industry our amusement.Collection: Work
And his best riches, ignorance of wealth.Collection: Ignorance
Why was this heart of mine formed with so much sensibility! Or why not my fortune adapted to its impulses! Tenderness without a capacity of relieving only makes the man who feels it more wretched than the object which sues for assistance.Collection: Heart
Nothing is so contemptible as that affectation of wisdom, which some display, by universal incredulity.Collection: Universal
True generosity is a duty as indispensably necessary as those imposed on us by law.Collection: Law
Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates, and men decay.Collection: Men
In all the silent manliness of grief.Collection: Grief
Aromatic plants bestow no spicy fragrance while they grow; but crush'd or trodden to the ground, diffuse their balmy sweets around.Collection: Crush
Silence is become his mother tongue.Collection: Mother
Those who think must govern those that toil.Collection: Thinking