The best way to make your audience laugh is to start laughing yourself.

— Oliver Goldsmith

The company of fools may first make us smile, but in the end we always feel melancholy.

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

The hours we pass with happy prospects in view are more pleasing than those crowned with fruition.

— Oliver Goldsmith

The man recover'd of the bite The dog it was that died.

— Oliver Goldsmith

… 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

The very pink of perfection.

— Oliver Goldsmith

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

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

— Oliver Goldsmith