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Ability
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Life has been compared to a race, but the allusion improves by observing, that the most swift are usually the least manageable and the most likely to stray from the course. Great abilities have always been less serviceable to the possessors than moderate ones.
-Oliver Goldsmith
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Advice
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Good counsel rejected returns to enrich the givers bosom.
-Oliver Goldsmith
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Alcohol/Alcoholism
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I can't say whether we had more wit among us now than usual, but I am certain we had more laughing, which answered the end as well.
-Oliver Goldsmith
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Ambition
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The ambitious are forever followed by adulation for they receive the most pleasure from flattery.
-Oliver Goldsmith
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Appearance
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If one wishes to become rich they must appear rich.
-Oliver Goldsmith
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Argument & Debate
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There is no arguing with him, for if his pistol misses fire, he knocks you down with the butt end of it.
-Oliver Goldsmith
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Aristocracy
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I have known a German Prince with more titles than subjects, and a Spanish nobleman with more names than shirts.
-Oliver Goldsmith
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Business
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Honor sinks where commerce long prevails.
-Oliver Goldsmith
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Unequal combinations are always disadvantageous to the weaker side.
-Oliver Goldsmith
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Character
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You can preach a better sermon with your life than with your lips.
-Oliver Goldsmith
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Children
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Girls like to be played with, and rumpled a little too, sometimes.
-Oliver Goldsmith
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Communication
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Every absurdity has a champion to defend it; for error is always talkative.
-Oliver Goldsmith
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Competition
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Surely the best way to meet the enemy is head on in the field and not wait till they plunder our very homes.
-Oliver Goldsmith
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Consumerism
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Our chief comforts often produce our greatest anxieties, and the increase in our possessions is but an inlet to new disquietudes.
-Oliver Goldsmith
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Crime
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Crime generally punishes itself.
-Oliver Goldsmith
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Criticism
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Write how you want, the critic shall show the world you could have written better.
-Oliver Goldsmith
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Debt / Borrow / Loan
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When a person has no need to borrow they find multitudes willing to lend.
-Oliver Goldsmith
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Desires
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People seek within a short span of life to satisfy a thousand desires, each of which is insatiable.
-Oliver Goldsmith
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Doctors
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The doctor found, when she was dead, her last disorder mortal.
-Oliver Goldsmith
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Drugs
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Thou source of all my bliss and all my woe, that found me poor at first, and keep me so.
-Oliver Goldsmith
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Duty
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But in his duty prompt at every call, he watched and wept, he prayed and felt for all.
-Oliver Goldsmith
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Enthusiasm
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I do not love a man who is zealous for nothing.
-Oliver Goldsmith
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Example
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People seldom improve when they have no other model, but themselves to copy after.
-Oliver Goldsmith
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Excellence
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To aim at excellence, our reputation, and friends, and all must be ventured; to aim at the average we run no risk and provide little service.
-Oliver Goldsmith
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Fashion
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A modest woman, dressed out in all her finery, is the most tremendous object of the whole creation.
-Oliver Goldsmith
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Books by and about Oliver Goldsmith