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.Collection: Life
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.Collection: Life
Were I to be angry at men being fools, I could here find ample room for declamation; but, alas! I have been a fool myself; and why should I be angry with them for being something so natural to every child of humanity?Collection: Children
Politeness is the result of good sense and good nature.Collection: Results
A modest woman, dressed out in all her finery, is the most tremendous object of the whole creation.Collection: Creation
Prudery is ignorance.Collection: Ignorance
You will always find that those are most apt to boast of national merit, who have little or not merit of their own to depend on . . .Collection: War
Take a dollar from a thousand and it will be a thousand no more.Collection: Money
If the soul be happily disposed, every thing becomes capable of affording entertainment, and distress will almost want a name.Collection: Names
What is genius or courage without a heart?Collection: Leadership
Blest that abode, where want and pain repair, And every stranger finds a ready chair.Collection: Thank You
It is not easy to recover an art when once lost.Collection: Art
A mind too vigorous and active, serves only to consume the body to which it is joined.Collection: Mind
Logicians have but ill defined As rational the human mind; Reason, they say, belongs to man, But let them prove it if they can.Collection: Science
He watched and wept and prayed and felt for allCollection: Sympathy
O friendship! thou fond soother of the human breast, to thee we fly in every calamity; to thee the wretched seek for succor; on thee the care-tired son of misery fondly relies; from thy kind assistance the unfortunate always hopes relief, and may be sure of--disappointment.Collection: Friendship
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.Collection: Children
There is one way by which a strolling player may be ever secure of success; that is, in our theatrical way of expressing it, to make a great deal of the character. To speak and act as in common life is not playing, nor is it what people come to see; natural speaking, like sweet wine, runs glibly over the palate and scarcely leaves any taste behind it; but being high in a part resembles vinegar, which grates upon the taste, and one feels it while he is drinking.Collection: Running
There is yet a silent agony in which the mind appears to disdain all external help, and broods over its distresses with gloomy reserve. This is the most dangerous state of mind; accidents or friendships may lessen the louder kinds of grief, but all remedies for this must be had from within, and there despair too often finds the most deadly enemy.Collection: Grief
Books are necessary to correct the vices of the polite; but those vices are ever changing, and the antidote should be changed accordingly should still be new.Collection: Book
To husband out life's taper at the close, And keep the flames from wasting by repose.Collection: Husband
By every remove I only drag a greater length of chain.Collection: Length
One writer, for instance, excels at a plan or a title page, another works away at the body of the book, and a third is a dab at an index.Collection: Book
Pride in their port, defiance in their eye, I see the lords of humankind pass by.Collection: Eye
In a polite age almost every person becomes a reader, and receives more instruction from the Press than the Pulpit.Collection: Reading
The hawthorn bush, with seats beneath the shade, For talking age and whispering lovers made.Collection: Talking
Processions, cavalcades, and all that fund of gay frippery, furnished out by tailors, barbers, and tire-women, mechanically influence the mind into veneration; an emperor in his nightcap would not meet with half the respect of an emperor with a crown.Collection: Gay
The more various our artificial necessities, the wider is our circle of pleasure; for all pleasure consists in obviating necessities as they rise; luxury, therefore, as it increases our wants, increases our capacity for happinessCollection: Circles
Man seems the only growth that dwindles here.Collection: Men
There is unspeakable pleasure attending the life of a voluntary student.Collection: Students
What if in Scotland's wilds we viel'd our head, Where tempests whistle round the sordid bed; Where the rug's two-fold use we might display, By night a blanket, and a plaid by day.Collection: Home
Fear guides more to their duty than gratitude; for one man who is virtuous from the love of virtue, from the obligation he thinks he lies under to the Giver of all, there are ten thousand who are good only from their apprehension of punishment.Collection: Gratitude
Whichever way we look the prospect is disagreeable. Behind, we have left pleasures we shall never enjoy, and therefore regret; and before, we see pleasures which we languish to possess, and are consequently uneasy till we possess them.Collection: Regret
Thus 'tis with all; their chief and constant care Is to seem everything but what they are.Collection: Hypocrisy
A man's own heart must ever be given to gain that of another.Collection: Heart
Amid thy desert-walks the lapwing flies, And tires their echoes with unvaried cries.Collection: Echoes
A French woman is a perfect architect in dress: she never, with Gothic ignorance, mixes the orders; she never tricks out a snobby Doric shape with Corinthian finery; or, to speak without metaphor, she conforms to general fashion only when it happens not to be repugnant to private beauty.Collection: Fashion
And e'en while fashion's brightest arts decoy, The heart distrusting asks if this be joy.Collection: Fashion
Embosom'd in the deep where Holland lies. Methinks her patient sons before me stand, Where the broad ocean leans against the land.Collection: Lying
Who, born for the universe, narrow'd his mind, And to party gave up what was meant for mankind; Though fraught with all learning, yet straining his throat To persuade Tommy Townshend to lend him a vote. Who too deep for his hearers still went on refining, And thought of convincing while they thought of dining: Though equal to all things, for all things unfit; Too nice for a statesman, too proud for a wit.Collection: Nice
And learn the luxury of doing good.Collection: Learning