Oliver Goldsmith
– 4 April 1774) was an Irish novelist, playwright, poet and physician.
Hope, like the gleaming taper's light,
Adorns and cheers our way;
And still, as darker grows the night,
Emits a brighter ray.
His conduct still right, with his argument wrong.
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.
To the last moment of his breath
On hope the wretch relies;
And e'en the pang preceding death
Bids expectation rise.
The watchdog's voice that bayed the whispering wind,
And the loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind.
For he who fights and runs away
May live to fight another day;
But he who is in battle slain
Can never rise and fight again.
This same philosophy is a good horse in the stable, but an arrant jade on a journey.
We are the boys
That fear no noise
Where the thundering cannons roar.
[To Mr. Johnson] If you were to make little fishes talk, they would talk like whales.
On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting;
'Twas only that when he was off he was acting.
The dog, to gain some private ends,
Went mad, and bit the man.
Baw! Damme, but I'll fight you both, one after the other!
With baskets.
Don't let us make imaginary evils, when you know we have so many real ones to encounter.
Pride in their port, defiance in their eye,
I see the lords of humankind pass by.
Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain.
A nightcap decked his brows instead of bay,
A cap by night — a stocking all the day!
A modest woman, dressed out in all her finery, is the most tremendous object of the whole creation.
The land of scholars and the nurse of arms.
Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow,
Or by the lazy Scheldt, or wandering Po.