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
To pursue trifles is the lot of humanity; and whether we bustle in a pantomime, or strut at a coronation, or shout at a bonfire, or harangue in a senate-house; whatever object we follow, it will at last conduct us to futility and disappointment. The wise bustle and laugh as they walk in the pageant, but fools bustle and are important; and this probably, is all the difference between them.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Fools
That virtue which requires to be ever guarded is scarce worth the sentinel.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Virtue
Ill fares the land To hastening ills a prey When wealth accumulates But men decay.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Wealth
His greatest riches-ignorance of wealth.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Wealth
Surely the best way to meet the enemy is head on in the field and not wait till they plunder our very homes.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Competition
If one wishes to become rich they must appear rich.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Appearance
Ceremonies differ in every country; they are only artificial helps which ignorance assumes to imitate politeness, which is the result of good sense and good-nature.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Knowledge, wisdom, erudition, arts, and elegance, what are they, but the mere trappings of the mind, if they do not serve to increase the happiness of the possessor? A mind rightly instituted in the school of philosophy, acquires at once the stability of the oak, and the flexibility of the osier.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Mind
Little things are great to little men.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Life
Persecution is a tribute the great must always pay for preeminence.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Prejudice
He cast off his friends as a huntsman his pack, for he knew when he pleased he could whistle them back.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Popularity
You, that are going to be married, think things can never be done too fast: but we that are old, and know what we are about, must elope methodically, madam.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Marriage
Such dainties to them, their health it might hurt: It’s like sending them ruffles, when wanting a shirt.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Luxury
The first time I read an excellent work, it is to me just as if I had gained a new friend; and when I read over a book I have perused before, it resembles the meeting with an old one.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Books, Reading
Law grinds the poor, and rich men rule the law.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Law, Lawyers
Learn the luxury of doing good.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Luxury, One liners, Goodness
Modesty seldom resides in a breast that is not enriched with nobler virtues.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Humility, Modesty
The united voice of millions cannot lend the smallest foundation to falsehood.
—Oliver Goldsmith
To be poor, and seem to be poor, is a certain way never to rise.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Poverty
Conscience is a coward, and those faults it has not strength enough to prevent it seldom has justice enough to accuse.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Conscience
For just experience tells, in every soil, That those who think must govern those who toil
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Experience
Measures, not men, have always been my mark.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Write how you want, the critic shall show the world you could have written better.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Criticism, Critics
It has been said that he who retires to solitude is either a beast or an angel; the censure is too severe, and the praise unmerited: the discontented being, who retires from society, is generally some good-natured man, who has begun his life without experience, and knew not how to gain it in his intercourse with mankind.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Solitude
The mind is ever ingenious in making its own distress.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Well had the boding tremblers learned to trace the day’s disasters in his morning face.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Teaching, Teachers
Vain, very vain is my search to find; that happiness which only centers in the mind.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: The Mind, Mind
It has been a thousand times observed, and I must observe it once more, that the hours we pass with happy prospects in view are more pleasing than those crowned with fruition.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Anticipation, Realistic Expectations, Hope, Future
The wisdom of the ignorant somewhat resembles the instinct of animals; it is diffused only in a very narrow sphere, but within the circle it acts with vigor, uniformity, and success.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Wisdom
In arguing one should meet serious pleading with humor, and humor with serious pleading.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Arguments
To aim at excellence, our reputation, and friends, and all must be ventured; to aim at the average we run no risk and provide little service.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Excellence
Honor sinks where commerce long prevails.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Business
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 by their understanding or sharing their generosity: they might be happy among their equals, but those are despised for company where they are despised in turn.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Wisdom makes but a slow defense against trouble, though at last a sure one.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Defense, Wisdom
The work of eradicating crimes is not by making punishment familiar, but formidable.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Punishment
The loud laugh, that speaks the vacant mind.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Laughter
But in his duty prompt at every call, he watched and wept, he prayed and felt for all.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Duty
To embarrass justice by a multiplicity of laws, or hazard it by a confidence in our judges, are, I grant, the opposite rocks on which legislative wisdom has ever split; in one case the client resembles that emperor who is said to have been suffocated with the bedclothes, which were only designed to keep him warm; in the other, that town which let the enemy take possession of its walls, in order to show the world how little they depended upon aught but courage for safety.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Justice
Ovid finely compares a broken fortune to a falling column; the lower it sinks, the greater weight it is obliged to sustain. When a man’s circumstances are such that he has no occasion to borrow, he finds numbers willing to lend him; but should his wants be such that he sues for a trifle, it is two to one whether he will be trusted with the smallest sum.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Fortune, Misfortune
When any one of our relations was found to be a person of a very bad character, a troublesome guest, or one we desired to get rid of, upon his leaving my house I ever took care to lend him a riding-coat, or a pair of boots, or sometimes a horse of small value, and I always had the satisfaction of finding he never came back to return them.
—Oliver Goldsmith
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