Skip to content

Full well they laughed, with counterfeited glee,
At all his jokes, for many a joke had he:
Full well the busy whisper, circling round,
Convey'd the dismal tidings when he frown'd.

— Oliver Goldsmith The Deserted Village (1770)

Another quote →

Topics

Teacher

More quotes by Oliver Goldsmith

Man wants but little here below,
Nor wants that little long.

The Vicar of Wakefield (1766)

Certainly, in two opposite opinions, if one be perfectly reasonable, the other can't be perfectly right.

The Good-Natur'd Man (1768)

This same philosophy is a good horse in the stable, but an arrant jade on a journey.

The Good-Natur'd Man (1768)

Conscience is a coward, and those faults it has not strength enough to prevent it seldom has justice enough to accuse.

The Vicar of Wakefield (1766)

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

The Vicar of Wakefield (1766)

All Oliver Goldsmith quotes →

You may also like

Each of these private teachers who work for pay ... inculcates nothing else than these opinions of the multitude which they opine when they are assembled and calls this knowledge wisdom.

Socrates

The land is the real teacher. All we need as students is mindfulness. Paying attention is a form of reciprocity with the living world, receiving the gifts with open eyes and open heart.

Robin Wall Kimmerer Braiding Sweetgrass (2013)

Who dares to teach must never cease to learn.

John Cotton Dana

School teachers, taking them by and large, are probably the most ignorant and stupid class of men in the whole group of mental workers.

H. L. Mencken The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (1908)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Oliver Goldsmith (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.