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
Allured to brighter worlds and led the way.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Example
They may talk of a comet, or a burning mountain, or some such bagatelle; but to me a modest woman, dressed out in all her finery, is the most tremendous object of the whole creation.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Fashion, Women
Ceremonies are different in every country, but true politeness is everywhere the same.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Manners
The fortunate circumstances of our lives are generally found, at last, to be of our own producing.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Self-Discovery
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: Realistic Expectations, Future, Hope
Ask me no questions, and I’ll tell you no lies.
—Oliver Goldsmith
People seldom improve, when they have no other model but themselves to copy after.
—Oliver Goldsmith
The united voice of millions cannot lend the smallest foundation to falsehood.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Mortifications are often more painful than real calamities.
—Oliver Goldsmith
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
Girls like to be played with, and rumpled a little too, sometimes.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Children
Such dainties to them, their health it might hurt: It’s like sending them ruffles, when wanting a shirt.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Luxury
Our chief comforts often produce our greatest anxieties, and the increase in our possessions is but an inlet to new disquietudes.
—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: Mistakes
One should not quarrel with a dog without a reason sufficient to vindicate one through all the courts of morality.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Hope, like the gleaming taper’s light, adorns and cheers our way; and still, as darker grows the night, emits a brighter ray.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Hope
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
At church, with meek and unaffected grace,
His looks adorn’d the venerable place;
Truth from his lips prevail’d with double sway,
And fools who came to scoff, remain’d to pray.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Wisdom, Prayer
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: Alcohol
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.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Cities
People seek within a short span of life to satisfy a thousand desires, each of which is insatiable.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Desire, Desires
The current of tenderness widens as it proceeds; and two men imperceptibly find their hearts filled with good nature for each other, when they were at first only in pursuit of mirth and relaxation.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Praise in the beginning is agreeable enough, and we receive it as a favor; but when it comes in great quantities, we regard it only as a debt, which nothing but our merit could extort.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Praise
The weak soul, within itself unblest, leans for all pleasure on another’s breast.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Weakness
A traveler of taste will notice that the wise are polite all over the world, but the fool only at home.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Manners
The malicious sneer is improperly called laughter.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Laughter
Thou source of all my bliss and all my woe, that found me poor at first, and keep me so.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Drugs
The jests of the rich are ever successful.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Wealth, Riches
Our greatest glory consists not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Failure, Resolve, Perseverance, Resilience, Endurance, Gratitude, Memory
Ridicule has always been the enemy of enthusiasm, and the only worthy opponent to ridicule is success.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Philosophy can add to our happiness in no other manner but by diminishing our misery; it should not pretend to increase our present stock, but make us economists of what we are possessed of. Happy were we all born philosophers; all born with a talent of thus dissipating our own cares by spreading them upon all mankind.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Philosophy, Gratitude, Appreciation, Blessings
You can preach a better sermon with your life than with your lips.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Character, Life, Action, Example
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
Crime generally punishes itself.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Crime
Success consists of getting up just one more time than you fall.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Resolve, Perseverance, Endurance
Women famed for their valor, their skill in politics, or their learning, leave the duties of their own sex, in order to invade the privileges of ours. I can no more pardon a fair one for endeavoring to wield the club of Hercules, than I could a man for endeavoring to twirl her distaff.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Modesty seldom resides in a breast that is not enriched with nobler virtues.
—Oliver Goldsmith
Topics: Humility
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