Oliver Goldsmith Quotes About Mankind

Quotes about: Mankind

• Who, born for the universe, narrow'd his mind, And to party gave up what was meant for mankind; Though fraught with all learning, yet straining his throat To persuade Tommy Townshend to lend him a vote. Who too deep for his hearers still went on refining, And thought of convincing while they thought of dining: Though equal to all things, for all things unfit; Too nice for a statesman, too proud for a wit.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Nice, Party, Learning

  'Retaliation' (1774) l. 29 (on Edmund Burke)

• The world is like a vast sea: mankind like a vessel sailing on its tempestuous bosom. ... [T]he sciences serve us for oars.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Science, Sea, Sailing

  Oliver Goldsmith (1824). “Letters from a Citizen of the World to His Friends in the East ...”, p.120

• Is it that Nature, attentive to the preservation of mankind, increases our wishes to live, while she lessens our enjoyments, and as she robs the senses of every pleasure, equips imag-ination in the spoil?

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Wish, Age, Pleasure

  Oliver Goldsmith (1816). “The Miscellaneous Works of Oliver Goldsmith, M.B.: With Memoirs of His Life and Writings : Enriched with an Elegant Portrait of the Author”, p.258

• Here let me sit in sorrow for mankind.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Sorrow, Mankind, Let Me

  Oliver Goldsmith (1854). “The Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith ; The Vicar of Wakefield: A Tale”, p.8

• Let observation with observant view,
  Observe mankind from China to Peru.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Travel, Views, Peru

• Philosophy can add to our happiness in no other manner but by diminishing our misery; it should not pretend to increase our present stock, but make us economists of what we are possessed of. Happy were we all born philosophers; all born with a talent of thus dissipating our own cares by spreading them upon all mankind.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Philosophy, Care, Add

  Oliver Goldsmith (1854). “Enquiry into the present state of polite learning. The citizen of the world”, p.234

• She who makes her husband and her children happy, who reclaims the one from vice, and trains up the other to virtue, is a much greater character than the ladies described in romance, whose whole occupation is to murder mankind with shafts from their quiver or their eyes.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Children, Husband, Character

  Oliver Goldsmith (1833). “Miscellaneous works of Oliver Goldsmith: with a new life of the author”, p.180

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