Let schoolmasters puzzle their brain, With grammar, and nonsense, and learning, Good liquor, I stoutly maintain, Gives genius a better discerning.
About Oliver Goldsmith
Oliver Goldsmithwas an Anglo-Irish writer best known for his works such as The Vicar of Wakefieldand She Stoops to Conquer (1771). He is thought by some to have written the classic children’s tale The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes (1765).
More quotes from Oliver Goldsmith
Honour sinks where commerce long prevails.
Anglo-Irish writer, poet, and physician (d. 1774)
I love everything that’s old, – old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine.
Anglo-Irish writer, poet, and physician (d. 1774)
Life is a journey that must be traveled no matter how bad the roads and accommodations.
Anglo-Irish writer, poet, and physician (d. 1774)
Where wealth accumulates, men decay.
Anglo-Irish writer, poet, and physician (d. 1774)
Be not affronted at a joke. If one throw salt at thee, thou wilt receive no harm, unless thou art raw.
Anglo-Irish writer, poet, and physician (d. 1774)
I chose my wife, as she did her wedding gown, for qualities that would wear well.
Anglo-Irish writer, poet, and physician (d. 1774)
Ceremonies are different in every country, but true politeness is everywhere the same.
Anglo-Irish writer, poet, and physician (d. 1774)
Write how you want, the critic shall show the world you could have written better.
Anglo-Irish writer, poet, and physician (d. 1774)
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.
Anglo-Irish writer, poet, and physician (d. 1774)
The best way to make your audience laugh is to start laughing yourself.
Anglo-Irish writer, poet, and physician (d. 1774)
Success consists of getting up just one more time than you fall.
Anglo-Irish writer, poet, and physician (d. 1774)
Surely the best way to meet the enemy is head on in the field and not wait till they plunder our very homes.
Anglo-Irish writer, poet, and physician (d. 1774)
Conscience is a coward, and those faults it has not strength enough to prevent it seldom has justice enough to accuse.
Anglo-Irish writer, poet, and physician (d. 1774)
There are some faults so nearly allied to excellence that we can scarce weed out the vice without eradicating the virtue.
Anglo-Irish writer, poet, and physician (d. 1774)
Our greatest glory consists not in never failing, but in rising every time we fall.
Anglo-Irish writer, poet, and physician (d. 1774)
If you were to make little fishes talk, they would talk like whales.
Anglo-Irish writer, poet, and physician (d. 1774)
The hours we pass with happy prospects in view are more pleasing than those crowded with fruition.
Anglo-Irish writer, poet, and physician (d. 1774)
Every absurdity has a champion to defend it.
Anglo-Irish writer, poet, and physician (d. 1774)
Pity and friendship are two passions incompatible with each other.
Anglo-Irish writer, poet, and physician (d. 1774)
The jests of the rich are ever successful.
Anglo-Irish writer, poet, and physician (d. 1774)
With disadvantages enough to bring him to humility, a Scotsman is one of the proudest things alive.
Anglo-Irish writer, poet, and physician (d. 1774)
Hope is such a bait, it covers any hook.
Anglo-Irish writer, poet, and physician (d. 1774)
A man who leaves home to mend himself and others is a philosopher; but he who goes from country to country, guided by the blind impulse of curiosity, is a vagabond.
Anglo-Irish writer, poet, and physician (d. 1774)
The company of fools may first make us smile, but in the end we always feel melancholy.
Anglo-Irish writer, poet, and physician (d. 1774)
Friendship is a disinterested commerce between equals; love, an abject intercourse between tyrants and slaves.
Anglo-Irish writer, poet, and physician (d. 1774)
You can preach a better sermon with your life than with your lips.
Anglo-Irish writer, poet, and physician (d. 1774)
As writers become more numerous, it is natural for readers to become more indolent; whence must necessarily arise a desire of attaining knowledge with the greatest possible ease.
Anglo-Irish writer, poet, and physician (d. 1774)
I was ever of the opinion, that the honest man who married and brought up a large family, did more service than he who continued single, and only talked of population.
Anglo-Irish writer, poet, and physician (d. 1774)
On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting, ‘Twas only when he was off, he was acting.
Anglo-Irish writer, poet, and physician (d. 1774)
They say women and music should never be dated.
Anglo-Irish writer, poet, and physician (d. 1774)
When lovely woman stoops to folly, and finds too late that men betray, what charm can soothe her melancholy, what art can wash her guilt away?
Anglo-Irish writer, poet, and physician (d. 1774)
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!
Anglo-Irish writer, poet, and physician (d. 1774)
Modesty seldom resides in a breast that is not enriched with nobler virtues.
Anglo-Irish writer, poet, and physician (d. 1774)
Tenderness is a virtue.
Anglo-Irish writer, poet, and physician (d. 1774)
Girls like to be played with, and rumpled a little too, sometimes.
Anglo-Irish writer, poet, and physician (d. 1774)
All that a husband or wife really wants is to be pitied a little, praised a little, and appreciated a little.
Anglo-Irish writer, poet, and physician (d. 1774)
Law grinds the poor, and rich men rule the law.
Anglo-Irish writer, poet, and physician (d. 1774)
Could a man live by it, it were not unpleasant employment to be a poet.
Anglo-Irish writer, poet, and physician (d. 1774)
Let schoolmasters puzzle their brain, With grammar, and nonsense, and learning, Good liquor, I stoutly maintain, Gives genius a better discerning.
Anglo-Irish writer, poet, and physician (d. 1774)
People seldom improve when they have no other model but themselves to copy.
Anglo-Irish writer, poet, and physician (d. 1774)
Man wants but little here below, nor wants that little long.
Anglo-Irish writer, poet, and physician (d. 1774)