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
Conscience is a coward, and those faults it has not strength enough to prevent it seldom has justice enough to accuse. – Oliver Goldsmith
Aromatic plants bestow
no spicy fragrance while they grow;
but crushd or trodden to the ground,
diffuse their balmy sweets around. – Oliver Goldsmith
Romance and novel paint beauty in colors more charming than nature, and describe a happiness that humans never taste. How deceptive and destructive are those pictures of consummate bliss! – Oliver Goldsmith
Rather would I have the love songs of romantic ages, rather Don Juan and Madame Venus, rather an elopement by ladder and rope on a moonlight night, followed by the fathers curse, mothers moans, and the moral comments of neighbors, than correctness and propriety measured by yardsticks. – Emma Goldman