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And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew,
That one small head should carry all it knew.

— Oliver Goldsmith The Deserted Village (1770)

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Learning

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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Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

Francis Bacon Meditationes sacræ (1597)

Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.

G. K. Chesterton

There is the love of knowing without the love of learning; the beclouding here leads to dissipation of mind.

Confucius

Learning will be cast into the mire and trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude.

Edmund Burke Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

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.