Skip to content

Oliver Goldsmith on Books

1728–1774 Ireland

← All quotes by Oliver Goldsmith

9 quotes

I love everything that's old: old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wines.

She Stoops to Conquer (1771)

In a polite age almost every person becomes a reader, and receives more instruction from the Press than the Pulpit.

In proportion as society refines, new books must ever become more necessary.

One writer, for instance, excels at a plan or a title page, another works away at the body of the book, and a third is a dab at an index.

The Bee (1759)

A book may be very amusing with numerous errors, or it may be very dull without a single absurdity.

The Vicar of Wakefield (1766)

Books are necessary to correct the vices of the polite; but those vices are ever changing, and the antidote should be changed accordingly—should still be new.

The first time I read an excellent book, it is to me just as if I had gained a new friend. When I read over a book I have perused before, it resembles the meeting with an old one.

They liked the book the better the more it made them cry.

She Stoops to Conquer (1771)

I armed her against the censures of the world; showed 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.

The Vicar of Wakefield (1766)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Oliver Goldsmith (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.