Date: 1764

"Each nobler aim, repressed by long control, / Now sinks at last or feebly mans the soul; / While low delights, succeeding fast behind, / In happier meanness occupy the mind: / As in those domes, where Caesars once bore sway, / Defaced by time and tottering in decay, / There in the ruin, heedless...

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1764

"Stern o'er each bosom reason holds her state / With daring aims irregularly great."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1764

"Thus every good his native wilds impart / Imprints the patriot passion on his heart, / And even those ills, that round his mansion rise, / Enhance the bliss his scanty fund supplies."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1764

Whence from such lands each pleasing science flies, / That first excites desire and then supplies; / Unknown to them, when sensual pleasures cloy, / To fill the languid pause with finer joy; / Unknown those powers that raise the soul to flame, / Catch every nerve and vibrate through the frame."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1764

"In wild excess the vulgar breast takes fire, / Till, buried in debauch, the bliss expire."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1764

"But while this softer art their bliss supplies, / It gives their follies also room to rise; / For praise too dearly loved or warmly sought / Enfeebles all internal strength of thought; / And the weak soul, within itself unblest, / Leans for all pleasure on another's breast."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1764

"Thus, while around the wave-subjected soil / Impels the native to repeated toil, / Industrious habits in each bosom reign, / And industry begets a love of gain."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1764

"For, as refinement stops, from sire to son / Unaltered, unimproved the manners run; / And love's and friendship's finely pointed dart / Fall blunted from each indurated heart."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1766

"Physicians tell us of a disorder in which the whole body is so exquisitely sensible, that the slightest touch gives pain: what some have thus suffered in their persons, this gentleman felt in his mind."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1766

"His mind had leaned upon their adulation, and that support taken away, he could find no pleasure in the applause of his heart, which he had never learnt to reverence."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)