Oliver Goldsmith: Quotes about men

Oliver Goldsmith was Irish physician and writer. Explore interesting quotes on men.
Oliver Goldsmith: 268 quotes12 likes

“Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay;
Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade;
A breath can make them, as a breath has made;
But a bold peasantry, their country's pride,
When once destroyed, can never be supplied.”

Oliver Goldsmith The Deserted Village

Source: The Deserted Village (1770), Line 51.

“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?”

Oliver Goldsmith book The Vicar of Wakefield

Source: The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), Ch. 29, Song, st. 1.

“Men may be very learned, and yet very miserable; it is easy to be a deep geometrician, or a sublime astronomer, but very difficult to be a good man. I esteem, therefore, the traveller who instructs the heart, but despise him who only indulges the imagination. 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 only a vagabond.”

Oliver Goldsmith book The Citizen of the World

The Citizen of the World (1760–1761), Letter VII.

“To men of other minds my fancy flies,
Embosomed in the deep where Holland lies.
Methinks her patient sons before me stand,
Where the broad ocean leans against the land.”

Oliver Goldsmith

Source: The Traveller (1764), Line 281.

“Measures, not men, have always been my mark.”

Oliver Goldsmith

Act II.
The Good-Natured Man (1768)

“Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.”

Oliver Goldsmith

Source: The Traveller (1764), Line 386.

“The better sort here pretend to the utmost compassion for animals of every kind. To hear them speak, a stranger would be apt to imagine they could hardly hurt the gnat that stung them: they seem so tender and so full of pity, that one would take them for the harmless friends of the whole creation; the protectors of the meanest insect or reptile that was privileged with existence. And yet, would you believe it? I have seen the very men who have thus boasted of their tenderness, at the same time devouring the flesh of six different animals toasted up in a fricassee. Strange contrariety of conduct! they pity and they eat the objects of their compassion.”

Oliver Goldsmith book The Citizen of the World

The Citizen of the World (1760–1761), Letter XV https://books.google.it/books?id=cIELAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA44.

“A flattering painter, who made it his care
To draw men as they ought to be, not as they are.”

Oliver Goldsmith

Source: Retaliation (1774), Line 63.