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By sports like these are all their cares beguil'd;
The sports of children satisfy the child.

— Oliver Goldsmith The Traveller (1764)

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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 →

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Some of my youthful readers are developing wonderful imaginations. This pleases me.

L. Frank Baum Introduction to The Lost Princess of Oz (1917)

So what if a kid dies? God will take care of him.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev

Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man.

Rabindranath Tagore Stray Birds (1916)

Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly attributed by the living to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to adults.

Thomas Szasz The Second Sin (1973)

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.