Oliver Goldsmith (1730–74) was an Anglo-Irish poet, novelist, essayist, and dramatist.
Details of Goldsmith’s birth are ambiguous. He was born the son of an Anglican clergyman, probably in Kilkenny West, County Westmeath, Ireland. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, before studying medicine at Edinburgh and Leyden. He practiced as a poor physician in Southwark, and was proofreader to novelist Samuel Richardson, before publishing a translation of the autobiography of the French Protestant Jean Marteilhe in 1758.
Goldsmith started and edited the weekly The Bee (1759,) and wrote essays for poet Tobias Smollett’s British Magazine. For John Newbery’s Public Ledger, he wrote the Chinese Letters (1760–71; republished as The Citizen of the World.) It was inspired by Montesquieu’s essay series Persian Letters (1721.)
The Vicar of Wakefield (1766) secured Goldsmith’s status as a novelist and The Deserted Village (1770) as a poet. Three years later, he achieved high regard as a playwright with She Stoops to Conquer (1773.)
The American writer and biographer Washington Irving wrote Life of Oliver Goldsmith (1840.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Oliver Goldsmith
No one but a fool would measure their satisfaction by what the world thinks of it.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Fools, Satisfaction, Foolishness
Nothing is so contemptible as that affectation of wisdom which some display by universal incredulity.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Some faults are so closely allied to qualities that it is difficult to weed out the vice without eradicating the virtue.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Faults, Mistakes
Of all kinds of ambition, that which pursues poetical fame is the wildest.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Poetry, Ambition
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
Topics: Retirement
Fortune is ever seen accompanying industry, and is as often trundling in a wheelbarrow as lolling in a coach and six.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Luck, Fortune
The malicious sneer is improperly called laughter.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Laughter
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!
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Romance
Ridicule has always been the enemy of enthusiasm, and the only worthy opponent to ridicule is success.
—Oliver Goldsmith
For just experience tells, in every soil, That those who think must govern those who toil
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Experience
O luxury! Thou curst of heaven’s decree.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Luxury
O Luxury! thou curst by Heaven’s decree.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Luxury
Politics resemble religion; attempting to divest either of ceremony is the most certain method of bringing either into contempt. The weak must have their inducements to admiration as well as the wise; and it is the business of a sensible government to impress all ranks with a sense of subordination, whether this be effected by a diamond, or a virtuous edict, a sumptuary law, or a glass necklace.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Government
Allured to brighter worlds and led the way.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Example
The life of man is a journey; a journey that must be traveled, however bad the roads or the accommodation.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Travel, Journeys, Tourism
Winter, lingering, chills the lap of May.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Spring
The jests of the rich are ever successful.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Wealth, Riches
I find you want me to furnish you with argument and intellects too. No, sir, these, I protest you, are too hard for me.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Arguments
Compliments which we think are deserved, we accept only as debts, with indifference; but those which conscience informs us we do not merit, we receive with the same gratitude that we do favors given away.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Compliments
The mind is ever ingenious in making its own distress.
—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
Topics: Consumerism
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 offers to both rich and poor the same happiness hereafter, and equal hopes to aspire after it.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Religion
To be poor, and seem to be poor, is a certain way never to rise.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Poverty
To what fortuitous occurrence do we not owe every pleasure and convenience of our lives.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Pleasure
Fear guides more than gratitude.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Fear
There is no arguing with him, for if his pistol misses fire, he knocks you down with the butt end of it.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Argument
A map does not exhibit a more distinct view of the situation and boundaries of every country, than its news does a picture of the genius and morals of its inhabitants.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: News
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
Topics: Alcoholism, Alcohol
One should not quarrel with a dog without a reason sufficient to vindicate one through all the courts of morality.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Quarrels
Persecution is a tribute the great must always pay for preeminence.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Prejudice
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