Oliver Goldsmith > Quotes

“Ask me no questions, and I'll tell you no lies.”
― Oliver Goldsmith

“I love everything that is old; old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wines.”
― Oliver Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield

“Our greatest glory consists not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”
― Oliver Goldsmith

“You can preach a better sermon with your life than with your lips.”
― Oliver Goldsmith

“The first time I read an excellent book, it is to me just as if I had gained a new friend. When I read a book over I have perused before, it resembles the meeting with an old one.”
― Oliver Goldsmith

“Don't let us make imaginary evils, when you know we have so many real ones to encounter.”
― Oliver Goldsmith

“He who fights and runs away
May live to fight another day...”
― Oliver Goldsmith

“Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey/Where wealth accumulates and men decay”
― Oliver Goldsmith

“Friendship is a disinterested commerce between equals; love an abject intercourse between tyrants and slaves.”
― Oliver Goldsmith

“…The more enormous our wealth, the more extensive our fears, all our possessions are paled up with new edicts every day, and hung round with gibbets to scare every invader.”
― Oliver Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield

“He who fights and runs away
May live to fight another day;
But he who is battle slain
Can never rise to fight again
”
― Oliver Goldsmith

“Every absurdity has a champion to defend it.”
― Oliver Goldsmith, The Traveller: Or, a Prospect of Society. a Poem, Inscribed to the REV. Mr. Henry Goldsmith. by Oliver Goldsmith, M.B. the Fifth Edit

“law grinds the poor, rich men rule the law”
― Oliver Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield

“I love everything that's old: old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wines.”
― Oliver Goldsmith

“People seldom improve when they have no model but themselves to copy after”
― Oliver Goldsmith

“Conscience is a coward, and those faults it has not strength enough to prevent it seldom has justice enough to accuse.”
― Oliver Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield

“Where commerce and capitalism are invloved, often times, morality and honor sink to the bottom-Oliver Goldsmith paraphrased”
― Oliver Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer

“A great source of calamity lies in regret and anticipation; therefore a person is wise who thinks of the present alone, regardless of the past or future.”
― Oliver Goldsmith

“A book may be very amusing with numerous errors, or it may be very dull without a single absurdity.”
― Oliver Goldsmith

“Life has been compared to a race, but the allusion improves by observing, that the most swift are usually the least manageable and the most likely to stray from the course. Great abilities have always been less serviceable to the possessors than moderate ones.”
― Oliver Goldsmith

“The nakedness of the indignant world may be cloathed from the trimmings of the vain.”
― Oliver Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield