Date: October 13, 1759

"My heart, a victim to thine eyes, / Should I at once deliver, / Say, would the angry fair one prize / The gift, who slights the giver?"

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1760-1761, 1762

"Upon her dismission a lady of distinction was reluctantly hawled along to the glass by her husband; in bringing her forward, as he came first to the glass himself, his mind appeared tinctured with immoderate jealousy, and I was going to reproach him for using her with such severity; but when the...

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1760-1761, 1762

"Upon approaching the glass, I could readily perceive vanity, affectation, and some other ill-looking blots on her mind; wherefore by my advice she immediately set about mending."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1760-1761, 1762

"Knowlege, wisdom, erudition, arts and elegance what are they, but the mere trappings of the mind, if they do not serve to encrease the happiness of the possessor?"

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1760-1761, 1762

"Thus, as a bark on every side beset with storms, enjoys a state of rest, so does the mind, when influenced by a just equipoise of the passions, enjoy tranquility"

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1760-1761, 1762

"The Prince now found that he had all along been under the power of enchantment, that his passion for the white mouse was entirely fictitious, and not the genuine complexion of his soul; he now saw that his earnestness after mice was an illiberal amusement, and much more becoming a ratcatcher tha...

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1760-1761, 1762

"A mind thus sunk for a while below its natural standard, is qualified for stronger flights, as those first retire who would spring forward with greater vigour"

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1764

"All evils here contaminate the mind, / That opulence departed leaves behind."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1764

"For, as refinement stops, from sire to son / Unaltered, unimproved the manners run; / And love's and friendship's finely pointed dart / Fall blunted from each indurated heart."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1766

"His mind had leaned upon their adulation, and that support taken away, he could find no pleasure in the applause of his heart, which he had never learnt to reverence."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)