Date: 1766

"We should then find that creatures, whose souls are held as dross, only wanted the hand of a refiner; we should then find that wretches, now stuck up for long tortures, lest luxury should feel a momentary pang, might, if properly treated, serve to sinew the state in times of danger."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1770

"Spontaneous joys, where nature has its play, / The soul adopts and owns their firstborn sway; / Lightly they frolic o'er the vacant mind, / Unenvied, unmolested, unconfined."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1770

"But all his serious thoughts had rest in Heaven. / As some tall cliff, that lifts its awful form, / Swells from the vale and midway leaves the storm, / Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread, / Eternal sunshine settles on its head."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1770

"Imagination fondly stoops to trace / The parlour splendours of that festive place."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1774

"Here lies honest William, whose heart was a mint, / While the owner ne'er knew half the good that was in't."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1774

"The pupil of impulse, it [his heart] forced him along, / His conduct still right, with his argument wrong; / Still aiming at honour, yet fearing to roam, / The coachman was tipsy, the chariot drove home."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1774

"While awake, and in health, this busy principle [the imagination] cannot much delude us: it may build castles in the air, and raise a thousand phantoms before us; but we have every one of the senses alive, to bear testimony to its falsehood."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1774

"Reason, therefore, at once gives judgment upon the cause; and the vagrant intruder, imagination, is imprisoned, or banished from the mind."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1774

"Our eyes shew us that the prospect is not present; our hearing, and our touch, depose against its reality; and our taste and smelling are equally vigilant in detecting the impostor."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1774

"But in sleep it is otherwise; having, as much as possible, put our senses from their duty, having closed the eyes from seeing, and the ears, taste, and smelling, from their peculiar functions, and having diminished even the touch itself, by all the arts of softness, the imagination is then left ...

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)