Goldsmith tells us, that when lovely woman stoops to folly, she has nothing to do but to die; and when she stoops to be disagreeab...le, it is equally to be recommended as a clearer of ill-fame.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I have this very moment finished reading a novel called The Vicar of Wakefield [by Oliver Goldsmith].... It appears to me, to be i...mpossible any person could read this book through with a dry eye and yet, I don't much like it.... There is but very little story, the plot is thin, the incidents very rare, the sentiments uncommon, the vicar is contented, humble, pious, virtuous--but upon the whole the book has not at all satisfied my expectations.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A terrible, beetle-browed, mastiff-mouthed, yellow-skinned, broad-bottomed, grim-taciturn individual; with a pair of dull-cruel-lo...oking black eyes, and as much Parliamentary intellect and silent-rage in him ... as I have ever seen in any man.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Now Air is hush'd, save where the weak-ey'd Bat, With short shrill Shriek flits by on leathern Wing,... Or where the Beetle winds His small but sullen Horn,LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea,... The ploughman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me. Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, And all the air a solemn stillness holds, Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight, And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Johnson did not answer ...; but talking for victory and determined to be master of the field, he had recourse to the device which ...Goldsmith imputed to him in the witty words of one of Cibber's comedies. "There is no arguing with Johnson; for when his pistol misses fire, he knocks you down with the butt end of it."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I told him that Goldsmith had said,... "As I take my shoes from the shoemaker, and my coat from the taylor, so I take my religion ...from the priest." I regretted this loose way of talking. JOHNSON. Sir, he knows nothing; he has made up his mind about nothing."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
After the planet becomes theirs, many millions of years will have to pass before a beetle particularly loved by God, at the end of... its calculations will find written on a sheet of paper in letters of fire that energy is equal to the mass multiplied by the square of the velocity of light. The new kings of the world will live tranquilly for a long time, confining themselves to devouring each other and being parasites among each other on a cottage industry scale.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There was an old woman and she lived in a shoe, She had so many children, she didn't know what to do.... She crumm'd 'em some porridge without any bread And she borrowed a beetle, and she knocked 'em all on the head. Then out went the old woman to bespeak 'em a coffin And when she came back she found' em all a-loffing.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »