Oliver Goldsmith May Quotations

Wit generally succeeds more from being happily addressed than from its native poignancy. A jest, calculated to spread at a gaming-table, may be received with, perfect indifference should it happen to drop in a mackerel-boat.

Pity, though it may often relieve, is but, at best, a short-lived passion, and seldom affords distress more than transitory assistance; with some it scarce lasts from the first impulse till the hand can be put into the pocket.

The volumes of antiquity, like medals, may very well serve to amuse the curious, but the works of the moderns, like the current coin of a kingdom, are much better for immediate use.

The nakedness of the indigent world may be clothed from the trimmings of the vain.

Absence, like death, sets a seal on the image of those we love: we cannot realize the intervening changes which time may have effected.

The premises being thus settled, I proceed to observe that the concatenation of self-existence, proceeding in a reciprocal duplicate ratio, naturally produces a problematical dialogism, which in some measure proves that the essence of spirituality may be referred to the second predicable.

He who fights and runs away May live to fight another day...

Though very poor, may still be very blest.

But winter lingering chills the lap of May.

A volcano may be considered as a cannon of immense size.