Quotes · verified word for word in the text
The Vicar of Wakefield quotes
13 quotes from The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith. Source: Project Gutenberg e-text #2667 (public domain in the USA), the text this site’s reader shows. Each quote is copied exactly from that text and links to its passage in the reader; when this page was built, every quote was checked word for word against the reader’s text.
Conscience is a coward, and those faults it has not strength enough to prevent, it seldom has justice enough to accuse.
I have known many of those pretended champions for liberty in my time, yet do I not remember one that was not in his heart and in his family a tyrant.’
What they may then expect, may be seen by turning our eyes to Holland, Genoa, or Venice, where the laws govern the poor, and the rich govern the law.
I armed her against the censures of the world, shewed her that books were sweet unreproaching companions to the miserable, and that if they could not bring us to enjoy life, they would at least teach us to endure it.
As the reputation of books is raised not by their freedom from defect, but the greatness of their beauties; so should that of men be prized not for their exemption from fault, but the size of those virtues they are possessed of.
What we place most hopes upon, generally proves most fatal.
Near a fortnight had passed before I attempted to restrain their affliction; for premature consolation is but the remembrancer of sorrow.
Mortifications are often more painful than real calamities.
At this he laughed, and so did we:—the jests of the rich are ever successful.
We are not to judge of the feelings of others by what we might feel if in their place. However dark the habitation of the mole to our eyes, yet the animal itself finds the apartment sufficiently lightsome.
Now, Sir, for my own part, as I naturally hate the face of a tyrant, the farther off he is removed from me, the better pleased am I. The generality of mankind also are of my way of thinking, and have unanimously created one king, whose election at once diminishes the number of tyrants, and puts tyranny at the greatest distance from the greatest number of people.
When lovely woman stoops to folly, And finds too late that men betray, What charm can sooth her melancholy, What art can wash her guilt away?
The only art her guilt to cover, To hide her shame from every eye, To give repentance to her lover, And wring his bosom—is to die.
My friends, my children, and fellow sufferers, when I reflect on the distribution of good and evil here below, I find that much has been given man to enjoy, yet still more to suffer. Though we should examine the whole world, we shall not find one man so happy as to have nothing left to wish for; but we daily see thousands who by suicide shew us they have nothing left to hope.