The collection / 362 fragments

The living archive

Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

SearchTypeTopicEraCulture / collection labelCountry attributionTraditionOrder

Author

Leave empty for every voice. Browse all authors ↗

Reset

Culture labels and country attributions follow the source collections; earliest origins may be unknown.

362 results · Page 14 of 16Play this collection ▷

01c. 1751 AD

The first fault is the child of simplicity, but every other the offspring of guilt.

Oliver Goldsmith / quote

↗

02c. 1751 AD

The fortunate circumstances of our lives are generally found at last to be of our own producing.

Oliver Goldsmith / quote

↗

03c. 1751 AD

Whatever mitigates the woes or increases the happiness of others is a just criterion of goodness; and whatever injures society at large, or any individual in it, is a criterion of iniquity. One should not quarrel with a dog without a reason sufficient to vindicate one through all the courts of morality.

Oliver Goldsmith / quote

↗

04c. 1751 AD

Whatever the skill of any country be in sciences, it is from excellence in polite learning alone that it must expect a character from posterity.

Oliver Goldsmith / quote

↗

05c. 1751 AD

It was reckoned the fault of the orators at the decline of the Roman empire, when they had been long instructed by rhetoricians, that their periods were so harmonious as that they could be sung as well as spoken. What a ridiculous figure must one of these gentlemen cut, thus measuring syllables and weighing words when he should plead the cause of his client!

Oliver Goldsmith / quote

↗

06c. 1751 AD

A poor man resembles a fiddler, whose music, though liked, is not much praised, because he lives by it; while a gentleman performer, though the most wretched scraper alive, throws the audience into raptures.

Oliver Goldsmith / quote

↗

07c. 1751 AD

When I see a young profligate squandering his fortune in bagnios, or at the gaming-table, I cannot help looking on him as hastening his own death, and in a manner digging his own grave.

Oliver Goldsmith / quote

↗

08c. 1751 AD

The work of eradicating crimes is not by making punishment familiar, but formidable.

Oliver Goldsmith / quote

↗

09c. 1751 AD

Mortifications are often more painful than real calamities.

Oliver Goldsmith / quote

↗

10c. 1751 AD

Taste is the power of relishing or rejecting whatever is offered for the entertainment of the imagination.

Oliver Goldsmith / quote

↗

11c. 1751 AD

Villainy, when detected, never gives up, but boldly adds impudence to imposture.

Oliver Goldsmith / quote

↗

12c. 1751 AD

That virtue which requires to be ever guarded is scarce worth the sentinel.

Oliver Goldsmith / quote

↗

13c. 1751 AD

Aspiring beggary is wretchedness itself.

Oliver Goldsmith / quote

↗

14c. 1751 AD

In all my wanderings through this world of care,In all my griefs -- and God has given my share --I still had hopes, my latest hours to crown,Amidst these humble bowers to lay me down;To husband out life's taper at the close,And keep the flame from wasting, by repose:I still had hopes, for pride attends us still,Amidst the swains to show my book-learn'd skill,Around my fire an evening group to draw,And tell of all I felt, and all I saw;And, as a hare, whom hounds and horns pursue,Pants to the place from whence at first she flew,I still had hopes, my long vexations past,Here to return -- and die at home at last.

Oliver Goldsmith / quote

↗

15c. 1751 AD

I love everything that is old; old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wines.

Oliver Goldsmith / quote

↗

16c. 1751 AD

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 / quote

↗

17c. 1751 AD

Conscience is a coward, and those faults it has not strength enough to prevent it seldom has justice enough to accuse.

Oliver Goldsmith / quote

↗

18c. 1751 AD

…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 / quote

↗

19c. 1751 AD

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 / quote

↗

20c. 1751 AD

He who fights and runs away May live to fight another day. But he who is in battle slain Can never rise to fight again.

Oliver Goldsmith / quote

↗

21c. 1751 AD

Philosophy ... should not pretend to increase our present stock but make us economists of what we are possessed of.

Oliver Goldsmith / quote

↗

22c. 1751 AD

To make a fine gentleman several trades are required but chiefly a barber.

Oliver Goldsmith / quote

↗

23c. 1751 AD

Hope like the gleaming taper's light adorns and cheers our way And still as darker grows the night emits a lighter ray.

Oliver Goldsmith / quote

↗

24c. 1751 AD

The English laws punish vice the Chinese laws do more they reward virtue.

Oliver Goldsmith / quote

↗