Date: 1760-1761, 1762

"My imagination painted her in all the bloom of youth and beauty. I fancied her attended by the loves and graces, and I set out with the most pleasing expectations of seeing the conquest I had made."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1760-1761, 1762

"Reason cannot resolve. It lends a ray to shew the horrors of my prison, but not a light to guide me to escape them."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1760-1761, 1762

"I was deaf, insensible, rock, adamant, the bailiffs could make no impression on my hard heart, for I effectually kept my liberty by never stirring out of the room."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1760-1761, 1762

"My heart still hovers round those scenes of former happiness with pleasure; and I find satisfaction in enjoying them at this distance, though but in imagination."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1760-1761, 1762

"But I should think a man of fashion makes but an indifferent exchange, who lays out all that time in furnishing his house which he should have employed in the furniture of his head; a person who shews no other symptoms of taste than his cabinet or gallery, might as well boast to me of the furnit...

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1760-1761, 1762

"FORTUNE has made me the slave of another, but nature and inclination render me entirely subservient to you; a tyrant commands my body, but you are master of my heart."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1760-1761, 1762

"It must, it must surely be, that this jarring discordant life is but the prelude to some future harmony; the soul attuned to virtue here, shall go from hence to fill up the universal choir where Tien presides in person, where there shall be no tyrants to frown, no shackles to bind, nor no whips ...

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1760-1761, 1762

"A mind too vigorous and active, serves only to consume the body to which it is joined, as the richest jewels are soonest found to wear their settings."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1760-1761, 1762

"It's unquiet waves were of the darkest hue, and gave a lively representation of the various agitations of the human mind."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1760-1761, 1762

"Fancy restrained may be compared to a fountain which plays highest by diminishing the aperture."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)