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
Let schoolmasters puzzle their brain, With grammar, and nonsense, and learning, Good liquor, I stoutly maintain, Gives genius a better discerning. – Oliver Goldsmith
Thou source of all my bliss and all my woe, that found me poor at first, and keep me so. – Oliver Goldsmith
I have known a German Prince with more titles than subjects, and a Spanish nobleman with more names than shirts. – Oliver Goldsmith
Very gay they were with snow and sleigh-bells, holly-boughs, and garlands, below, and Christmas sunshine in the winter sky above. All faces shone, all voices had a cheery ring, and everybody stepped briskly on errands of good-will. – Louisa May Alcott, “Seamstress,” Work: A Story of Experience, 1873